Tephritidae

I’m nearly late to my lab that day. I rush up the stairs of the old brick building, laughs and conversations of the luckier students who had just gotten out of class echoing through the halls. My feet pound against the dingy linoleum, almost loud enough to drown them all out. I step into the lab room, exhale in one long woosh, and let my shoulder’s drop – the professor isn’t there yet. But the TAs are. They sweep through the aisles with strange plastic cylinders in their hands. I step foot in the chilled, sterile room and cover my shoulders with a stark white coat, glass tickling against each other in students’ arms, and the clean yet cloying scent of acetone invading my nose. I can see what’s in the containers from here. Fruit Flies. Dozens of fruit flies roaming around their plastic prison, content, unsuspecting. I know the fruit fly: the tiny intruder that burrows its way into your unsuspecting home and unsuspecting fruit. The flying black speck that flocks to the fleshy rotting corpses that you didn’t even realize had passed. They are the epitome of hedonism, feasting and mating simultaneously within just ten days of life and dying within thirty. There is no time to spare for the fruit fly, who buzzes around aimlessly, no care in the world aside from its next meal. The fruit fly doesn’t care about you or your home, about philosophy or politics. All it wants is your leftovers, the scrape you wouldn’t throw to your dogs. In everyday life, the fruit fly and I are enemies. I…

modest effect on sexual maturation. In contrast to males, female Q-flies exhibited little response to methoprene treatment. Both when held individually in small cages and in groups in larger cages, yeast supplementation resulted in longer life spans for both males and females with and without methoprene, but methoprene did not significantly affect longevity. Longevity was higher when the flies were in larger group cages rather than in individual cages. Overall, these results show great promise…