Pest Management Professional, September 2012
NPMA Tips flies Jim Fredericks Contributor I n a recent paper published in The remarkable fruit fly Current Biology1 researchers from the United Kingdom and Australia provide evidence that genetic information passed from mothers to their offspring might be the reason many female species outlive males To reach these conclusions the geneticists studied the mitochondrial DNA of the common fruit fly or vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster This tiny pest is considered an ideal laboratory animal and its genetic makeup is the most widely studied and best understood of all multicellular organisms Some of the reasons the fruit fly is so popular for use in the laboratory include First fruit flies have a high reproductive output with females producing about 500 eggs during the course of their 40 to 50 day lives Second the development time from egg to adult is fairly short as few as seven to 10 days at room temperature These two traits allow populations in the laboratory to grow quickly providing large amounts of data from multiple generations in a short period of time Finally fruit flies are easy to care for in the laboratory with entire colonies consisting of thousands of individuals housed in extremely small spaces Each of the characteristics that make the common fruit fly an ideal laboratory organism to study for genetic research also help make it a troublesome pest to control The high reproductive output and short developmental period mean populations can grow large in a short period of time Additionally fruit flies are capable of thriving in small volumes of fermenting organic matter complicating control efforts by requiring technicians to locate the breeding sources in areas that might be difficult to find or access The same traits that make fruit flies so troublesome to technicians are what make them so valuable to the study of genetics Regardless of which side of this definition you fall there is one thing that geneticists and pest management professionals can agree on Fruit flies are remarkable creatures pmp 1 Camus M F D J Clancy D K Dowling Mitochondria Maternal Inheritance and Male Aging Current Biology Published online Aug 2 2012 You can reach Fredericks technical director for the National Pest Management Association NPMA at jfredericks@ pestworld org The same traits that make fruit flies so troublesome to technicians make them valuable to the study of genetics A fruit fly pupa in the strands of a mop www mypmp net Pest Management Professional September 2012 97 Photo courtesy of and copyrighted by Gene White pmimages@ earthlink net
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