Drosophila Melanogaster Lab Report

Drosophila melanogaster are a species more commonly known to us as fruit flies. They are extremely important in biological research due to the fact that they make excellent model organisms for understanding genetics. Reasons behind their frequent use include; easily cultured in the lab, short generation time, and they can produce many offspring. In this lab report, we began with three different strains of Drosophila.
Introduction
The common form of Drosophila is known as the “wild type”, any fly that exhibits phenotypic mutation beyond this is referred to as a “mutant”. Wild type drosophila typically are a yellow-brown color, have black rings around their abdomen, have brick-red eyes, and wings that continue beyond their abdomens. Females on average tend to be bigger than their male counterparts and have a pointed abdomen. Another way to tell the sexes apart is that a male’s dorsal side is completely black, where as in females only the last little segment is black. We want to distinguish the phenotypic differences between our populations, figure out which population is the “wild type”, and find out if each population’s sex ratio conforms to the 1:1 male to female expectation.
Materials and Methods In our lab we have three vials, each containing a different strain of Drosophila, labeled B, D, and G. B contained 41 drosophila, D had 27 and G had 50. In order for us to examine their phenotypes we had to use a re-usable swab coated in Fly Nap (anesthetic) to knock them out. We quickly placed the coated swab into the vial and placed it upside down to prevent the flies from getting stuck
None of the populations had a high enough disparity between sexes to warrant a rejection of our