Carolina® Small Drosophila Culture Kit

ProductID: 173050

The Carolina® Small Drosophila Culture Kit provides the materials needed to get started with Drosophila; just add your favorite Drosophila cultures. Kit includes: a FlyNap® Anesthetic Kit, 36 culture vials, 36 vial plugs, 72 vial labels for Drosophila crosses, instant Drosophila medium, 2 sorting brushes, 100 sorting cards, and the Carolina® Drosophila Manual. Shipped via surface mail only. Note: Drosophila cultures are needed but not included.

Applicable grades

grd-9-12, grd-coll

Applicable subjects

subj-biology, subj-genetics

More information

For more information please visit Carolina® Small Drosophila Culture Kit information page

Care guide

The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is the organism most widely used in genetic studies. It is also an excellent live food.

Immediate Care & Handling
When cultures arrive, remove the caps but leave the plugs in place. Keep cultures out of direct sunlight, and maintain at 20° to 25° C (68° to 77° F).

Culturing
It is easy to culture the fruit fly and its generation time is only 2 weeks at 21° C (70° F). The flies develop more slowly if you maintain the culture at a lower temperature, while keeping the culture at a higher temperature may promote male sterility, growth of bacteria and fungi, and mite infestation.

Use transparent vials (item #173120) or glass or plastic bottles (item #173135) as culture vessels for Drosophila. We recommend Carolina’s Formula 4-24® Instant Drosophila Medium (item #173200, #173202, #173204, #173218, #173210, #173212, #173214, or #173216). Follow the directions sent with the medium to set up vials for new cultures. Food medium should be moist at all times, as dry food will inhibit larval growth and result in few flies eclosing. Transfer flies to new culture vials every 10 to 14 days.

For more detailed information on setting up cultures and making crosses, see the Carolina™ Drosophila Manual (item #452620).

FAQs
Which type of Drosophila should I order to feed my mantis (or small frog or reptile)?
We recommend our flightless flies culture (item #144455). Because they cannot fly, they seldom escape from a terrarium or habitat with a fine mesh screen.

What materials do you recommend for culturing Drosophila?
Our Drosophila Culture Kit (item #173050) has everything you need except for the starter cultures. It also comes with the Carolina™ Drosophila Manual, which explains the procedures for culturing and doing Drosophila crosses, and gives information on crosses that are widely used in genetics labs.

Which cultures should I order for a beginning genetics lab?
In the Drosophila cultures section of our print catalog, the list of strains is color coded to indicate those with easy-to-recognize phenotypes that are good for beginning students. Among the most widely used are vestigial crossed with wild type to give a monohybrid cross; vestigial crossed with sepia for a dihybrid cross; and white crossed with wild type for a sex-linked cross. We list F1 cultures of these crosses for your convenience.