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Millions of Fruit Flies Will Be Dropped On Los Angeles (thehill.com) 84

Posted by BeauHD from the birth-control dept.
"Earlier this month, the California Department of Food and Agriculture quarantined 69 square miles of metro L.A. after invasive and destructive Mediterranean fruit flies were found at a home in the Leimert Park neighborhood," notes The Hill. Officials are now planning to use small planes to drop millions of fruit flies over Los Angeles in an effort to eradicate an invasive and destructive species of the insects. From the report: Jay Van Rein, a spokesperson for the CDFA, told SFGATE that officials plan to drop approximately 250,000 sterile male fruit flies per square mile in the quarantine area every week for six months, or perhaps longer. The sterile males mate with the females, which fail to produce offspring, reducing the population over time. Van Rein says the Preventative Release Program (PRP), as it's called, has been used effectively to manage invasive species since 1996.

The quarantine radius includes parts of downtown and South L.A., Hyde Park, Baldwin Hills, Culver City, Inglewood, Pico-Robertson and Mid-Wilshire. Those who live within the zone are urged not to transport any fruits or vegetables from their property and to double-bag them in plastic before tossing them in the trash. The Mediterranean fruit fly is very tiny -- only about 1/4 inch in length -- but they can potentially cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to crops if left unchecked, officials said. When a female lays eggs in a fruit or vegetable, they hatch into maggots that tunnel through it and cause rot.
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Millions of Fruit Flies Will Be Dropped On Los Angeles More

Millions of Fruit Flies Will Be Dropped On Los Angeles

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  • futurama joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by redback ( 15527 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @02:35AM (#63973240)

    I'm sending in more trains!

  • Hope this goes better than when WKRP in Cincinnati [wikipedia.org] dropped turkeys [youtube.com] from a helicopter for Thanksgiving ...

    "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

    Turkeys Away [wikipedia.org] (S1E7)

    • Unless their wings are clipped, turkeys can fly.

      They aren't distance flyers, and don't migrate, but they can fly up into trees or fly a few hundred meters to escape a predator.

      Even domestic turkeys can glide or fly over a fence.

      The WKRP episode that described them as falling like concrete was not realistic.

      • They aren't distance flyers, and don't migrate, but they can fly up into trees or fly a few hundred meters to escape a predator.

        We have wild turkeys wandering through our neighborhood. I've seen them fly across my yard and "roost" on my roof. They don't do it very often, I think they were spooked by something. I'd never seen anything like it.

      • I raise domestic heritage turkeys, They can, indeed, fly.
        • Some turkeys can fly. I'm sure the ones that you raise are capable of it. However, most commercially farmed turkeys cannot fly. The Turkeys are bred/fed to get the most meat possible and a grown turkey ready for processing will be essentially flightless. That's assuming the wings are also clipped in some way.

      • The WKRP episode that described them as falling like concrete was not realistic.

        They were frozen, like you find at the supermarket.

        That was the joke...

        • I remember WKRP, though not well enough to know which came first - this joke, or the one about NASA's "turkey gun" being used for testing aircraft windscreens, where the punchline was "first, defrost your turkey ..."
      • Turkeys that have been plumped-up for commercial slaughter cannot fly. If they could you wouldn't want to drop them from a helicopter as a promotion since they would just fly away. But, indeed, the vast majority would fall pretty much like concrete. They would probably flap their wings in desperation and maybe slow their descent but not enough to live if dropped from any appreciable height.

  • Yay .... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The gubmint is dropping genetically modified flies on a major urban centre??? Can't wait to see the conspiracy theories the Trumpers will cook up over this.

    • The flies aren't GMO. They are sterilized with radiation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Native LA Resident here. They've been doing this for years, whenever an infestation crops up. No big deal.

  • Will they also take the million flying around my bananas?

  • I find this interesting because usually it is the American species which are considered invasive and problematic.

    A lot of various species in Europe were wiped out by their American equivalents (toads, squirrels, mosquitoes...)

    • Chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, and white pine blister rust came the other way. The US had to mostly exterminate the local currants (aka goose berries) to stop the last one.

      European house sparrows are at my bird feeder, and Eurasian collared doves moved in a few years ago. And the starlings have gone south for the winter.

      There is quite the interchange in progress.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        >European house sparrows are at my bird feeder,

        But are they unladen?

        hawk

    • I find this interesting because usually it is the American species which are considered invasive and problematic.

      I think this is immediacy bias. Species are invasive when they are non-native AND are considered a nuisance or deleterious to existing species.

      In America, we don't think of many European species as invasive because they've become naturalized and accepted over, in many cases, 300+ years. Honeybees fly around stinging people and efficiently collecting nectar that could have been collected by native species. Not invasive because we like pollinators and honey. Africanized "killer bees" -- invasive species (we d

    • Just seems that way because you're European. Sample bias.
      The US is full of old world invasive species.

  • Fruit flies are little fuckers (Score:3)

    by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @04:51AM (#63973344)
    Had an infestation in my flat recently due to some of these bastards feasting on a very hidden rotting onion. After a week of exterminating any seen and hiding any visible food in packaging or fridge, cleaning carefully the remains of all food on counters and baiting with vinegar/dishwashing liquid solution, they finally died off.

  • Plastic Bags? In California?! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Those who live within the zone are urged not to transport any fruits or vegetables from their property and to double-bag them in plastic before tossing them in the trash.

    I thought plastic bag were illegal in California? And throwing them in the garage? That'll get you shot out of a cannon.

  • Contingency planning (Score:5, Funny)

    by TractorBarry ( 788340 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @05:38AM (#63973410) Homepage

    In related news contingency plans are being drawn up in case a follow up plane full of spiders is required.

    If sufficient funds can be allocated longer term plans for planes full of cats and dogs are also being considered.

    Neither myself or an old lady know why ?

  • > in an effort to eradicate

    Is that really a possibility? The little buggers are a plague here in Western Australia. I've almost given up trying to get citrus fruit from my garden. It needs so much pesticide, and you still get maggots. BTW, the name is a misnomer, as they are actually native to sub-Saharan Africa.

    • The word "eradicate" is stupid science reporting by a crap paper. The goal is not to eradicate. It's to manage the population. Eradicating has knock on ecosystem effects, even if the species is invasive.

      Australia has been doing this as well. Specifically fruit flies, and specifically the picture of a release team on the DAFF website is of the program running in Western Australia https://www.agriculture.gov.au... [agriculture.gov.au]

      • Re:Eradicate? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @09:44AM (#63974164)

        The word "eradicate" is stupid science reporting by a crap paper. The goal is not to eradicate. It's to manage the population.

        Oh no, the goal is to eradicate the files in the state. Medflies are not native to California and we desperately want to keep it that way. If we detect the infestation early enough, we actually can kill them all. Seems we go through this fire drill at least every 5-10 years.

        Protecting California agriculture is why there are agricultural inspection stations on every major road leading into the state. You or I can't bring any fruits or produce grown out-of-state into the state to prevent just this sort of thing. I generally assume regulations like this are all about protectionism and crony deals but not in this case. It really is trying to prevent damaging invasive species from getting a foothold.

        It's weird. California is an enormous state but it's really a landlocked island. Most of the borders are very sparsely populated with surprisingly few highways (my guess is fewer than 100) in and out. You wouldn't think you could effectively patrol and control a thousand-mile border but actually, we can.

        • The word "eradicate" is stupid science reporting by a crap paper. The goal is not to eradicate. It's to manage the population.

          Oh no, the goal is to eradicate the files in the state. Medflies are not native to California and we desperately want to keep it that way. If we detect the infestation early enough, we actually can kill them all.

          Sadly no, they have been endemic since the late 1980s. We can show genetically now that the ones that pop up every few years are from the same founding population.

          Seems we go through this fire drill at least every 5-10 years.

          We do, and have been doing it for 27 years (before that malathion bait spray was used). It does knock the population down to undetectable levels for a few years, so it is an effective management technique.

  • As God as my witness, I thought they could fly! (Score:5, Funny)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @07:07AM (#63973588)
    --Les Nessman.

  • Precedent (Score:3)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Thursday November 02, 2023 @07:38AM (#63973680) Journal
    The US and Panamanian governments have collaborated [nationalgeographic.com] for decades [sciencehistory.org] to release gazillions of sterile screwworm flies across the Darien Gap. This has been a sort of biological firewall to keep this flesh-eating parasite from coming north.
  • Millions of fruit flies? Fruit flies are tiny. Los Angeles is big. Millions won't even be noticeable.

    If they released several *billion* of the things, it would only be around a thousand per person, which in the grand scheme of things is not that many. Really they should be releasing trillions of them. THAT would have an actual impact.
  • where the 2 species breed and a horrific new species is created that eats people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      "Don't you realize what you fools have done? Now we have an infestation of *half-sterile* fruit flies!" :)

      hawk

  • will find a way

  • Headline: "Millions of Fruit Flies Will Be Dropped On Los Angeles"

    Wouldn't it make more sense to drop them on San Francisco?

  • The Mediterranean fruit fly is very tiny -- only about 1/4 inch in length...

    A quarter of an inch in length??? Maybe fruit flies are smaller here in Canada - if I ever saw one that size in my house I'd be tempted to go full-on carnivore...

    • When they say tiny, I think it's meant as in comparison to common houseflies which - in the area - are usually about a half inch and much broader bodied. The area also has much larger horseflies although they're rare in heavily populated areas. The fruit flies are bigger than local species of gnats and invasive "ankle biter" mosquitos but smaller than indigenous mosquitos.

    • The Mediterranean fruit fly is very tiny -- only about 1/4 inch in length...

      A quarter of an inch in length??? Maybe fruit flies are smaller here in Canada - if I ever saw one that size in my house I'd be tempted to go full-on carnivore...

      I had the same surprised reaction. I live in the USA and the typical fruit flies I've seen are maybe 2-3 mm in length. A quarter-inch fruit fly would be a worse pest in some ways, but it also would make them easier to trap/kill. It's easy to miss an attempt to swat a 2-3mm bug, and visually lose it in flight. A 6-7mm bug, I could follow and smash.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hopefully it works. In the early 90s, SoCal was dusted with malathion to control a Mediterranean fruit fly problem and it took over 20 years for suburban wildlife to recover. When I was a kid I remember seeing lizards, frogs, possums, squirrels, etc. But after the spraying... really nothing. Before that, rats were really rare. After, not so much. It was probably around 2005-2010 I started seeing possums and lizards and skunks again. Squirrels only since around 2020. Frogs, still gone. It was so mu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Nature always finds a way. Sterilization and selection is not 100% accurate, sterile male flies are inferior sexual competitors relative to their wild counterparts so effectiveness varies wildly.

      It works in a lab, not so much in the wild. There are studies going back to the 70s that have tried this, and you need a huge ratio of sterile to wild flies (ratios in the thousands-to-one) and proper breeding grounds to even make a small (50-70%) impact and if not continued, the population recovers after just a few

      • This is a very well established proven effective method of insect control in use for 80 years (look up the screwfly) and is used regularly around the world for dozens of species of insect pests now.

        You are doing a human ChatGPT routine here - making up stuff that sounds plausible if someone knows nothing about the subject and presenting it with an authoritative tone. But what you wrote is entirely B S.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          No, I just wrote a synopsis of the available meta-analysis of the literature on the topic.

    • Hopefully it works. In the early 90s, SoCal was dusted with malathion to control a Mediterranean fruit fly problem and it took over 20 years for suburban wildlife to recover. When I was a kid I remember seeing lizards, frogs, possums, squirrels, etc. But after the spraying... really nothing. Before that, rats were really rare. After, not so much. It was probably around 2005-2010 I started seeing possums and lizards and skunks again. Squirrels only since around 2020. Frogs, still gone. It was so much fun as a kid to go hunting tadpoles in the storm channels. Sad to think the last generation and a half and probably future ones, won't get to.

      You are making up (or imagining) this claimed devastating long duration effect of the malathion spray. If these devastating changes in the ecosystem lasting 30 years were real you would have no trouble citing reams of links to studies supporting this. But Googling you will find nada. Which is not surprising since the effects of malathion bait spray (molasses like drops) is well understood. It was sprayed at a low application rate, requiring the bait to attrack the Med Fly for effect and malathion breaks dow

  • Do these fruit flies like a banana?

    • If the name "Mediterranean fruit fly" is indicative of their geographical origin, no, they probably don't like a banana - any more than any other fruit which is leaking sugar-rich juice, or exuding ethene (I think it's ethene that promotes ripening of bananas - "Big Banana" has some gas-based technique for delaying then inducing ripening in a boat load of bananas) or whatever other sensory tricks fruit flies use to find a food source.
  • You're saying this happens on a regular basis, and it's a normal practice in combating invasive species. Maybe. But it sounds like a sci-fi or horror movie to me. It's terrifying to imagine hundreds of thousands of these flies raining down from planes onto people's heads. Granted, it might be a necessary measure, and I read here [gradesfixer.com] that they are pests capable of destroying half or more of the crops and be a disaster. Biology versus human nightmares, and I'm not even sure I'm ready for that in real life! They m

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