Question

Write the scientist names of Fruit fly. Why did Morgan prefer to work with fruit flies for his experiments? State any three reasons.

Answer 1

Hint: Fruit flies are mainly seen in the surroundings of the fruits. These are small, less weight in nature and belong to the genus of the Drosophila. T. H. Morgan used these flies for his experiment on hereditary at Columbia university which is called a fly room.

Complete Answer:
Fruit fly is scientifically named as Drosophila melanogaster. Morgan choose fruit flies for his work experiments. This is because of the following reasons
(1) Fruit flies are easy to handle than the other flies or insects
(2) In a single mating, these flies produce more young ones. Hence these are used in the experimental process
(3) These flies are dimorphic in nature. This means the male and female shows the different morphological characters like changes in the body shape, size, color etc. Female flies are larger in size when compared to the male flies.
(4) Fruit flies have the lower lifespan of only two weeks. So the experiment can check numerous lime in the short period of time. Since it has very shorter lifespan, numerous generations can be used and tested.
(5) These flies can be reared or grown in the simple medium such as laboratory and it does not require any complex synthetic setup.
(6) These flies can be easily found because they are readily available in all the areas.
(7) They show many hereditary variations and can be easily seen with the help of the simple microscope.

Note: These fruit flies are mostly used as the model testing organism for the experimental projects on the field of biology, genetics, biochemistry etc. Particularly Drosophila melanogaster is extensively used in research purposes.