DIRTY OLD MEDFLIES

State scientists put tiny flies through a virility check before sending them out on the insect equivalent of a prowl through the singles bars.

The scientists are raising 400 million Mediterranean fruit flies at Van Nuys airport to be released in the next few weeks in the San Fernando Valley. Authorities hope the male Medflies, sterilized by radiation, will end a Medfly infestation by monopolizing wild female flies, preventing them from reproducing.

The Medflies arrive as pupae from a federal lab in Hawaii and must incubate for four days. Scoopfuls of pupae--about 4,500 a scoop--are stored in paper tubs and incubated at 78 degrees.

Department of Food and Agriculture Entomologist Gary Agosta gives some budding Medflies what he calls the “dirty old man test.” Agosta wants to see flies who get down to mating business within 10 to 20 minutes, showing they are highly sexed suitors that will woo wild females vigorously and crowd out the wild--fertile--males.

It’s a messy process, state worker Pat Minyard said. “You get flies in hair, flies in eyelashes, flies in shirt collars, flies everywhere.”

Once hatched, tubfuls of flies are driven through neighborhoods in the back of pickup trucks until tub-thumping workers scatter them to the winds.