The Biological Species Of Maggot Flies

Throughout this experiment a number of random and procedural errors were apparent; these errors could have affected the results of the experiment in a number of ways. One experimental error that occurred during the experiment was that some flies became stuck in the food source and died. The main cause of this was the fact that the fly vials were stood up (vertically) before the flies had fully recovered from the anaesthetic. This could be overcome in future experiments by ensuring that the vials are kept horizontal until all of the flies fully recover from the anaesthetic.

Drosophila melanogaster is a small, common fly found near unripe and rotted fruit. It has been in use for over a century to study genetics. Thomas Hunt Morgan was the best biologist studying Drosophila early in the 1900’s. Morgan was the first to discover sex-linkage and genetic recombination, which placed the small fly in the forefront of genetic research. Scientists have used Drosophila for many reasons. For one they are very easy to maintain, breed, anesthetize, and kill with little equipment. They are also very small and it is easy to distinguish males vs females and sexually mature flies and virgins. At lastly, the flies have a very short two week life span. On days 2-7 of their life

To set up this experiment, two twenty-five gallon aquariums, 3 petri-dishes, 200 flies, rotten bananas, and yeast were used. The bananas chosen to be an accelerant for the growth of the yeast and were frozen so they would be easier to cut. The yeast was used because the drosophila melanogaster prefer this as a food source.  The vestigial and wild type flies were sexed (to determine their sex), sorted, and counted.  An initial population size of 100 total flies was decided so that it would be easier to determine the phenotypic percentage of the total population. Fly paper was placed in one of the sets of cages to impose a method of natural selection as well as the sexual selection which is being solely tested by the other set of cages.

melanogaster, leaving B and D to be our mutants. Before crossing our populations, we made not of each one’s phenotype in order to see how crossing them would affect their phenotypes: Population B flies had no wings and red eyes, population D had full wings and black eyes and population G had full wings and red eyes. We expected the resulting phenotypes to be some sort of combination, revealing which traits were dominant. However, what we did not expect was the abnormal mutant that arose in a couple of our populations.

Describe the sex and phenotype of the mutant fly. Describe the phenotype as it compares to the wild type.

The goldenrod gall fly (or Eurosta solidaginis) is a parasite whose life depends upon and revolves around the goldenrod plant. After mating, the female gall fly uses its ovipositor (structure used to inject eggs into a plant) to insert its eggs into the stem of a goldenrod plant. After about ten days, the fly larvae hatch and begin to eat the inside of the plant. The saliva of the larva contains a chemical that causes the plant to swell, creating what is known as a gall; this serves as a food source and a protective shell for the growing larva. When fall approaches, the larva digs an escape tunnel by which it will later exit the gall as an adult; however, the larva does not complete the tunnel, instead it leaves a thin membrane of plant material for protection (Abrahamson & Heinrich, n.d.). E. solidaginis larvae then pupate in late winter or early spring, and leave the gall as adults soon afterwards (Abrahamson, Sattler, McCrea, & Weis, 1989). Once freed from the gall,

A species is certain kind of animal, plant, fungus or other organism. Which is a group of individual that are part of interbreed in nature, it is the largest gene pool under a natural condition. It is when a pair of organisms produce and offspring in nature and both parents need to belong to same species. This definition does not include many types of bacteria which are capable to asexual reproduction. Another difficult way of understanding would be like for example a cat species are capable of hybridizing such as a lion and a tiger who mate and produce a liger as well as a cross between a male jaguar and female lion which produce a jaglion. Species are formed through a process called speciation and this happens when lineage of single splits into to two or more separate species, this is how new species are created.

The approximately 30 wild type males were and kept alive in order to cross mate with the females. All of the flies from all four vials that were collected were part of the P generation. Crossing the flies was the next

Methods The experiment involved groups of 4. Septic measures such a washing hand were used to minimizing any unwanted microbes. Equal fly food and distilled water was mixed to until it has a consistency of mashed potatoes. The food was solid enough to slide down into the slide yet moist enough for larvae to move around it.

Unweighted parsimony analysis of combined gene regions of wing lice also produced a single tree. Maximum-likelihood analysis produced a tree that was mostly similar to the parsimony tree. In this tree, four of eight branches resulted in over 50% of bootstrap replicates. Unweighted parsimony analysis of body lice produced a single tree where eight of eleven nodes resulted in over 70% of bootstrap replicates. Maximum-likelihood analysis produced a tree that was mostly similar to the parsimony tree and resulted in eight of eleven nodes supporting over 60% of bootstrap replicates. Cophylogenetic analysis of wing lice and dove phylogenies showed three or four cospeciation events in likelihood and parsimony trees which was found to not be more than expected by chance. For body lice, there were eight cospeciation events. This was more than what could have happened by chance. When wing lice was forced to be 100% host specific, the same amount of cospeciation events

Fruit Flies were observed throughout most of the experiment. Observing the sex differences between male and female under the microscope help identify the phenotypes as well. For example, it was possible to see if the fruit flies were female or male wildtype, vestigial, white-eye and white eye vestigial. The observations to distinguish female or male fruit flies is that males fruit flies have sex combs on front of their legs. Another observation that can be distinguish between male and female fruit flies is that males have a darker ventral posterior section in the abdomen. Female fruit flies is just plain nothing showing. And lastly, another observation that is used to distinguished between male and females fruit flies is the size. It is considered

Defining a species can be tricky. The most common way to define a species is with the biological species concept that says a species is a group of individuals that can have fertile offspring. Microbes, however, reproduce asexually with no need for a partner. Does that mean they are not a species? The New Mexico whiptail lizards are a species, but since there are no males, the females lay eggs with no male fertilization. Species of the Potentilla genus were found to readily hybridize with one another even though the two species are vastly different. These findings led the, “fuzzy species concept,” that says that data should be used to designate a species and that the boundaries to define on are fuzzy. Matt Haber says we should think of fuzzy

This statement is supported by an abundance of evidence from level 1 and 2 studies gathered from a comprehensive review of maggot therapy and individuals with venous ulcers.1,2,3,4,5 Maggot therapy treatments have yielded 95% confidence intervals of 1.65-3.251 in regards to decreasing debridement time. Multiple studies discovered that 45.5%-96.9% of the wound was debrided following one treatment of maggot therapy compared to only 33.5-39.4% after conservative treatment.2,3,5 Clinical and statistical significances are evident regarding debridement time when comparing maggot therapy and conservative treatment options including; hydrogel (P<0.001)1,2 and surgical debridement (P=0.04).3 The application of maggot therapy; 1-2 treatments/week1,2,3,4,

The fruit fly is the quintessential model organism, and have been for than a century. in fact, a scientist by the name of Thomas Hunt Morgan was working with fruit flies in 1910. The fruit flies have various characteristics that make it an excellent choice to study for humans. for one, most of its genome has been mapped out, “nearly 75% of human disease-causing genes are believed to have a functional homolog in the fly” (Pandey, Nicholas, 2011). Their genome is very similar to humans which is why they’re studied so extensively. Another reason they’re ideal candidates is that they're easy to work with primarily. They have very short life cycles which provide abundant offsprings. They also have a very low number of chromosomes, one pair of sex

Entomology is an area of forensics that studies insects. The science is mainly applied to murders, since insects are often the first at the crime scene (Discovery Network, 2015). The bugs can be used to analyze a body, especially to determine when and where the murder occurred (Environmental Science, 2017). Entomologists are able to do so by analyzing the age and species of a bug (Discovery Network, 2015). While this does not always provide necessary evidence, it often gives police a lead in a case (Discovery Network, 2015). Ultimately, entomology is a science that works due to biology, can serve as strong evidence, and has multiple requirements in order to go into the field.