Fruit Fly Lab Report Essay

The experiment was performed on February 2nd 2016 at the University of Calgary in a Biological Science laboratory. The experimental procedure was done in a group of four students.

Another way the lab was inaccurate is because the throwing aspect wasn’t the controlled variable. That being said we couldn’t rely on the fact that one is more fit than the other. Just because one flies further than the other doesn’t mean that it is more fit. That being said, if the bird flew the furthest without actually being that fit in the real world, it could mess up our data.

It is possible that the temperature at which the flies were kept dropped significantly below 20 degrees Celsius; this could have caused the death of some of the files or slowed down their growth and reproduction rate. This would result in there being fewer flies. This problem could be overcome in further experiments by using a larger heating device with a more responsive thermostat to keep the Fly house within the recommended temperature range for D. melanogaster.

This Punnet Square represents the F1 offspring breeding with each other to create more offspring. This second set of offspring is the F2 generation. If both parents are heterozygous dominant, then the offspring expected would be: 50% heterozygous dominant, 25% homozygous dominant and 25% homozygous recessive.

Introduction: The intention of this lab was to gain a better understanding of Mendelian genetics and inheritance patterns of the drosophila fruit fly. This was tasked through inspecting phenotypes present in the dihybrid crosses performed on the flies. An experimental virtual fly lab assignment was also used to analyze the inheritance patterns. Specifically, the purpose of our drosophila crosses is to establish which phenotypes are dominant/recessive, if the traits are inherited through autosome or sex chromosomes and whether independent assortment or linkage is responsible for the expressed traits.

You can collect individual flies that you have generated (for use in future experiments) by dragging them

For the dark environment we cut out a sheet of black paper and taped it to the top of the observation chamber, for the light environment two flashlights were above the chamber. A funnel was used to put the bugs in the middle and keep them there until the timer was started. After thirty seconds when the pill bugs were released our group counted how many bugs were either in the neutral, dark, or light section of the observation chamber this is how the data was collected. This experiment had two trials, so the data, that was collected during both trials were averaged out. During the second experiment that was conducted the pill bugs were once again placed in the middle of the observation chamber with the funnel, but this time one section of the chamber had soil with three drops of water, while the other section of the chamber had soil with 3 drops of vinegar. Once thirty seconds had past after the bugs had been released each member of the group counted how many bugs were on each sections of the chamber. This experiment was done twice and then the data was averaged out the data. This method of collecting data was chosen because this was the simplest and most efficient way of collecting

Introduction: Drosophila is the name given to a genus of small flies within the family, Drosophilidae. They are commonly referred to as fruit flies or pomace flies. They have historically been called vinegar or wine flies due to the fact that they commonly gather around rotting fruit. The fruit fly is sometimes mistaken for the Tephritidae family of flies which is closely related and is even sometimes referred to as the true fruit fly however; tephritids tend to only feed on unripe fruit, and have been regarded as destructive agricultural pests. For instance, the Mediterranean fruit fly has devastated the agricultural economy sector of several Mediterranean countries millions of dollars in ruined crops.

We began the experiment by dividing into pairs and selecting one mutation of flies. Claire and I started off with Vestigial Flies. We then got our supplies; three clean tubes, three caps, three sponges, fly nap and wand, dissecting microscope, paintbrush, and three small plastic plates (for separation). As a team, Claire began to tap the container containing the mutant flies (this way they stayed at the bottom), while I had my extra sponge and clean tub ready to stick on top of hers’. After counting down to three, she pulled the sponge on her fly container and I quickly placed the empty vial on top. I then flipped the vials upside down and proceeded to knock as many to the empty vial as I could. We did the exact same step as before, counted

we said goodbye and placed them in the fly morgue. We allowed the F2 larval

The Tallahassee Democrat News, a site that is part of the USA Today Network, reports current news on scientific advancements. The article, Fruit Flies Yield Clues On Cancerous Tumor Hotspots, offers an overview of the research done by Yoichiro Tamori, Wu-Min Deng, and Emiko Suzuki, who have discovered that epithelial tissues in fruit flies can be cancerous. The reasoning behind studying fruit flies is because, “Flies and humans have a lot in common in terms of genes and pathways for developing cancer” (Haughney). In the article, the researchers explain that the tumor hot spots, which appear to be near the epithelial tissues, found in fruit flies have also been found in several human cancers, “These tumor hotspots all involved an oncogenic signaling pathway that have been shown to play a part in many types of human cancers” (Haughney). However, the scientists do assure the reader that in distinct areas of the epithelial tissue there are tumor cold spots. Without a doubt, this is the beginning of a prolonged experiment, “The more we know, the better we can get at treating and preventing cancer” (Haughney).

Some larva containing vials had hatched into flies. Counting of the flies began at this point. As flies started to grow, at different rates for each vial, with in the first seven days after all larva had hatched the flies were counted. The procedure was done according to theDrosophila manual (45-2620)

After having emerged from the pupae, the flies cease to grow; small flies are not

Which glider, small or large, gave you a smaller % difference? What factors contributed to the error in the experiment?

Ho: There is not a significance difference between the alive number of balls collected on high vs. low resource abundance.