Drosophila, Fitness and Frequency of the Mutation

Drosophila, Fitness and Frequency of the Mutation

Brian H. Grove

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Teresa Brooks

Drosophila, Fitness and Frequency of the Mutation

Introduction

Drosophila Melanogaster, or the common house fly, possesses a life span of approximately 30-50 days, in optimal conditions. Adult male flies are smaller than the females and have a dark colored end on their abdomen, while females have a more pointed abdomen with a striped pattern. The Drosophila’s life cycle will begin when a female becomes receptive to a males courting, roughly 8-12 hours after emergence from the paparium. The female Drosophila will mate with up to 8 male flies before the eggs are fertilized. Drosophila have a last male president in fertilization of eggs. In other words the last male to mate with the female will have the highest percentage of its alleles passed to the offspring. The female fly will lay up to 400 eggs. These eggs will take from 7-50 days to develop. Upon hatching the larvae will go through 2 separate molting periods and finally undergo a metamorphosis for 4 days inside of the paparium and emerge as adult flies. (2014)

White-eyed Mutation

Drosophila Melanogaster naturally have red eyes in the majority of populations, the wild type. Red eyed wild type flies have high concentrations of photoreceptor cells in their eyes which allows them to absorb ultraviolet light, blue light, and green light. These receptor cells contain large quantities of pigments that leads to the wild types red eyes. The white-eyed mutation is a relatively new, sex linked mutation. Only adult male flies have this white eyed mutation. White eyes have lost most of the photoreceptor cells in their eyes and the pigmentation that comes with them, causing the white eyes to have low tolerances for UV light.(2014)

Advantages and Disadvantages

Although white eyed flies seem to have a disadvantage at survivability in daylight conditions they make up for in the sex linked mutation. Drosophila Melanogaster have a last...