dispersal distances

[Hampton Carson]

Back in the 1950's, Harrison Stalker and I did a number of experiments, 
some rather elaborate, on dispersal of Drosophila robusta in forest areas 
and suburbs of St. Louis. In one case, in the spring, we set up a set of 
concentric circles of traps, caught many flies in them, and marked them 
and released them at the circle center. After doing this for some weeks 
without getting a single return, we abandoned the experiment! Maybe the 
flies in spring are exceptionally motile, since in another smaller case we 
did get a few returns. I also caught some robusta at my home near St. 
Louis and released them a mile or so away, as I recall. I got a few 
returns. Research notes on such things would be among Stalker's and my 
research notes that are deposited at the American Philosophical Society 
archives in Philadelphia. Good recapture results were published for one 
of the Hawaiian species in Fontdevila and Carson 1978 Amer. Nat. 111:789-791.
I suppose you have a copy of this.

With Aloha and good luck with a frustrating but interesting project

Hamp Carson

On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, A.J. Davis wrote:

> Does anyone out there have any unpublished information (i 
> have, i think, most of the published data) on how far 
> Drosophila of different species disperse ?  I would like to 
> get some idea of the distribution of dispersal distances 
> which can then be used in spatial population models.
> 
> 
> Andrew
> 
> Andrew Davis
> University of Leeds, Yorkshire
> England, LS2 9JT   UK
> 
> a.j.davis at uk.ac.leeds
> 
>