# Different fruit fly strains



## galexie (Jun 29, 2006)

I appear to have acquired a couple different melanogster types. I have one "flightless" fruit fly that has longer wings and can hop, but not fly. I have another "flightless" fruit fly that has tiny wings, less than half the size of the wings on the other type. What kinds of flies do I have? Turkish glidiers? and something else?


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## galexie (Jun 29, 2006)

Bump.


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## pl259 (Feb 27, 2006)

I think the big winged hoppers are some form of glider, the small wings are the typical flightless mels. There are also wingless varieties as well.

EricG.NH


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## defaced (May 23, 2005)

Reading these descriptions (Link) it sounds like you have Turkish Gliders and Curly Winged melanos.


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## PDFanatic (Mar 3, 2007)

^Agreed


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## girlfrog (Dec 19, 2006)

I have to throw the BS flag down on "Turkish Gliders". I work in a lab and if you cannot site your sources then you are a fool. Plain and simple. I have yet to find any kind of documentation as to what "Turkish Gliders" are, and where they came from can someone elaborate. I picked up some a while back from a friend and they looked strangely similar to another wing mutant strain from Carolina Biological. What is the deal there? Can someone elaborate?


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

Turkish glider is the marketing name for those sold in the pet trade.... I would be very surprised if they were a winged mutant strain that you couldn't get from Carolina. 

As a marketing strategy it works and regardless the strain is cheap when aquired through a pet trade vendor and prolific. 

Ed


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## girlfrog (Dec 19, 2006)

It's prolific because it retains the reproductive capacity of the wild type fly, but that's BS that someone can rename something in the name of business. Should I resell them as Michigan Buzzers? L-A-M-E. This is what sours me about this hobby is that people can do things and deny responsibility.


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I'd be careful at looking at a FF supplier website to determine your answer - remember that's just an online catelog of what that particular retailer works with, and is not an all inclusive list of what is present in the hobby.

The Little Brown Frogs' Guide to Fruit Flies

This is a bit of a pilot of part of the food guide being developed, but may clear up some questions. Please note - due to the similarity between many of the melanogaster mutations, you need to know your source, the exact name of the strain you're working with, and realize that two seperate dealers may be selling the same thing under different names, or the other way around due to a lot of confusion over fly strains... so when making your cultures make sure all the flies are of the same strain from the same supplier. If you aren't exactly sure what you have, and you find the need to start over, buy from an established fly vendor. 

Girlfrog - the name turkish glider is just a label, and one to note that this strain is different from others. I don't believe the gliders and turkish gliders are compatible genetically. As the company that originally introduced it to the hobby, FlyCulture had the right to call them whatever he wanted when he _introduced them to this market_, because honestly, calling them by the label geneticists label them buy is confusing unless you're a geneticist, and they needed to be called something other than "glider" in the hobby since there was/is an established glider type in the hobby. It's marketing. If I wanted to introduce a new feeder bug to the market, and there wasn't an established common name for it, I could make one up too. If you want documentation for where these flies come from, ask him for it. The hobby in general isn't worried about the science behind these guys too much, so another label needed to be created.


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