diff --git a/dipper/sources/FlyBase.py b/dipper/sources/FlyBase.py
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/dipper/sources/FlyBase.py
+++ b/dipper/sources/FlyBase.py
@@ -416,7 +416,11 @@ class FlyBase(PostgreSQLSource):
 
         col = self.files[src_key]['columns']
 
-        with gzip.open(raw, 'rt') as tsvfile:
+        # JR - I've set encoding to latin-1 to fix the UnicodeDecodeError that happens
+        # when the default encoding (utf-8) is used. This possibly will break if/when
+        # the encoding of this file upstream at Flybase is changed to utf-8. If so,
+        # trying setting encoding='utf-8' below
+        with gzip.open(raw, 'rt', encoding='latin-1') as tsvfile:
             reader = csv.reader(tsvfile, delimiter='\t')
             # skip first four lines
             for _ in range(0, 2):
Cherry picked commits from dataset PR to fix Flybase ingest (set encoding to latin-1 in _fyref_to_pmid() to fix UnicodeDecodeError)