#fruit fly

fruit fly needlefelt sculpture made for a professor, nickel for scale

It has a pipecleaner skeleton, allowing it to stand on its own and have a mild degree of posability

Now, first thing I learned: fruit flies don't eat fruit. They eat yeast. They eat the yeast on fermenting fruit. They can not actually eat fruit. Their name is a lie.

Secondly, one of the two mutant lines I was given to cross are flies with the apterous mutation, aka they're wingless. I feel so bad for them, they can't do the one thing they're named for, they cant fly.

And then I realized. My fruit flies are in truth insects that eat yeast and can't fly.

Bamboo-shoot Fruit Fly (𝘎𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘻𝘰𝘯𝘢 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘴), family Tephritidae, Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand

String identified: ! C a t t-c g acta g attt a t a? T a t ta t t ta t a a ? A , ga tg at!

Closest match: Drosophila melanogaster strain ANU-1 mitochondrion, complete genome Common name: Common Fruit Fly

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TODAY'S FACT IS

Did you know that Drosophila Pseudoobscura is a species of fruit fly commonly used in lab settings? The females of this species are polyandrous, meaning they mate with more than one male. This helps to diversify the gene pool as much as possible. In 2005, it became the second fruit fly species to have its entire genome sequenced.

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Using fruit flies as a model, researchers found that the "winter lock" is driven by seasonal changes in a key gene found in the circadian clock, which regulates daily biological rhythms. Through a process called alternative splicing, the gene, known as timeless, produces a winter-specific protein that alters activity patterns and suppresses reproduction. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest animals may rely on multiple versions of their biological clock, with different molecular arrangements helping them adapt to seasonal environmental changes.