1. I suspect the fruit fly cultures were killed off by overheating in shipment. Are you certain the brown "mites" were actually mites? It's hard to tell, but with a dead fruit fly culture, a lot of little, more heat resistant organisms, which in a healthy culture wouldn't even be noticed, might take over the media. Actually, if you currently keep dart frogs, you could probably feed these "mites" off to them with no problem, then destroy the entire culture, just to get rid of a possible fly pathogen that might be passed on. If the "mites" are existing alone without benefit of living fruit flies, I think they may be something else.

2. If you have flying flies, the culture with flying fruit flies has been contaminated somehow along the way with wild flies. Either the original flightless flies all died and some wild types found their way in to propagate, or some wild ones got in and interbred with the flightless flies, producing a percentage of about 1/4 of flies that fly. I had this happen a lot when I was using lids with only paper towel or coffee filters over the air hole. Since I've been using either the foam plugs or the perforated tops with the net pasted into place, I haven't had a wild fly contamination problem.

3. If you order two or more types of flightless melanogaster fruit flies, mixing the different types may also result in a percentage of flighted flies. Some may have a gene for being totally wingless, others may have different genes that inhibit flight, such as crumpled wing, or muscle problems with flight, all on different alleles, that may combine when allowing them to breed together. Depending upon the various genetic combinations and dominance, mixing them is quite likely to come up with a number of fully flighted offspring.

4. I can promise, but not against my life, just because nothing is impossible, that yours and your fiance's itching problem has nothing to do with the incidental mites in the fruit fly cultures. Mites that affect fruit flies are not pathogens on human skin, nor should they cause any particular allergic reactions confined in a culture cup. There are thousands of species of mites, and most of them are specialists. You are both more endangered, allergic and itch wise, from the dust bunnies under the bed, full of microscopic mites, than from the visible mites in a fruit fly culture.

5. Hopefully our monitor/host can resolve your problem with the posting and e-mail, name changes problem. It may have been a simple error, not a hacker. I think the solution will be simple.
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Patty
Pahsimeroi, Idaho

D. auratus blue, auratus Ancon Hill, galactonotus orange, galactonotus yellow, fantasticus, reticulatus, imitator, castaneoticus, azureus, pumilio Bastimentos. P. lugubris, vittatus, terribilis mint green, terribilis orange.

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