Fruit Fly Experiment

1488 Words6 Pages

1) Introduction: Very little is known about the purpose of fruit flies. In South Africa, the fruit fly is an invasive species that cause a lot of damage to host plants. By understanding the environmental conditions that affect the fruit fly, we can start to understand why this creature is on the planet as every organisms plays an important role in the “Circle of life”. 2) Research We know that female fruit flies are able to reproduce at an alarming rate- laying as many as 100 eggs per day! And we also know that fruits flies are influenced by groups of other fruit flies as to where they lay their eggs (as confirmed in an experiment by Marine Battesti of the Université Paris-Sud in France). We also know that fruit flies are very attracted to damp, normally dark places such as fruit bowls or rubbish bins. If we compare the environmental conditions in which we expose the fruit flies- would we be able …show more content…

Over the first three days, both containers had no flies present- but the results started differentiating after that. On day 4, the organic container started collecting flies. The number of flies on the organic banana started rising at an exponential rate from day four, whereas the number of flies on the inorganic banana was minute in comparison. The inorganic banana only started collecting flies on day six. On day 7 the inorganic banana had the same number of flies as the organic banana did on day 5- this type of occurrence also happened on days 6; 9; 10; 7; 12; 8; 13 and 14. Looking at the inorganic banana, on day 9 and 10 the numbers remained constant- which did not happen with the organic banana. This also happens between day 13 and 14 with the inorganic banana. If we compare the results halfway through the experiment, we see that the organic banana had 240% more fruit flies than that of the inorganic banana. At the end of the experiment, the organic banana had 207% more flies than the inorganic

More about Fruit Fly Experiment

Open Document