280 days of Urbpandemonium #130

[urbpan]

What you see here, infesting our kitchen compost container, is one of the most important animals in human history. The humble red-eyed fruit fly is a tiny pest found worldwide. Its maggots feed on the yeasts that feed on fruit sugars--so anywhere a banana is ripening, or a glass of wine has sat out too long, or some juice was left in a discarded, you will find these vinegar flies circling. Because they are easy to rear in captivity, and reproduce incredibly quickly, they are among the most frequently used lab animals. It is impossible to overstate the contribution this species has made to science.

They have been used in so many papers and studies, that even though their classification has changed--they are no longer taxonomically Drosophila melanogaster*, they are Sophophora**--that their old scientific name is still used. Nobody wants to go through the hundreds of thousands of uses of Drosophila and find and replace them with Sophophora.

* "Dew-loving, black belly"

** "Carrier of wisdom"

Comments

[autumnfox.livejournal.com]

You just turned my world upside down. Drosophila is no longer Drosophila???

I hated working with them as a biology student.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Embarassing entomologist confessions: every time I've tried to keep a colony of fruit flies, I kill them. I don't know why, but it's a thing that happens.