Drosophila Fruitfly Hunting

As I am running out of flies to feed the spiderlings, finally, I resorted to the use of Drosophila melanogaster. But how am I supposed to get them? Well, after a couple of readings over the internet, I found that I could start with the wild type ones. Bait them with rotten fruits and catch them and feed them with the medium I have prepared in the lab in order to get new batch cultures. Drosophila develops faster than Phorid flies about 2 weeks time. This is an advantage!. So I started out catching them with rotten pineapples in my kitchen. Sounds like I am bit becoming like Thomas Morgan, the famous geneticist who used Drosophila flies for research. After trapping them with a vial, I transferred the flies onto the medium and let them propagate. Eureka, a problem is solved!

 

Rotten pineapple skins in sink. Ignore the plastic bag..

 Once  a fly get trapped inside the vial, it is transferred into the big cup with fruit fly medium formulation I obtained from my SV lab...Hope they can grow more and more!