Simple Homemade Tools to Handle Fruit Flies-Drosophila melanogaster

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is widely used both in biological research and biology education. Handling adult flies is common but difficult in practice, as adult flies fly. Demonstrated here is how to make some simple and cost-effective tools to address difficult issues in the handling of Drosophila. Holes in foam stoppers are made and pipette tips or funnels are inserted into the holes. Flies then move only in one direction into the pipette tip/funnel assemblage, allowing efficient control of the transfer of adult Drosophila into or out of a vial. Existing protocols have been modified for cool-anesthetizing flies by chilling in crushed ice and transferring them onto a cold, hard icepack surface. The icepack is covered with a piece of medical gauze that keeps immobilized flies from the condensed water when examined under a stereomicroscope. The flies are finally euthanized for counting and sorting or discarded by microwaving. A bottle-shaped cage has also been developed for collecting eggs, as well as a labor-saving device and accompanying protocol for cleaning glass culture vials.