Biologists new experiment may vindic...( y area before letting them out via two ...)

y area before letting them out via two tunnels. One tunnel leads to a bright area and the other toward a darker area. Inevitably, some of the flies choose to go to the light and others to the darkness. Once in their new light or dark homes, Fry inspects the number of the bristles on each fly, acting like a sort of natural selection by removing sparsely bristled flies from the bright area and more densely bristled flies from the darker one. The bristles act as a marker that Fry can track over generations. The leftover flies in each habitat are then allowed to reproduce before being sent back to the lobby to make a habitat choice again.

Initially, Fry does not expect much correlation between bristle number and the individual's preference for light or dark abodes, but after several dozen generations over the course of several months he expects to see that flies with fewer bristles tend toward the dark while multi-bristled ones head for the light. A fly that prefers the dark and happens to have few bristles will survive Fry's "weeding out" process and will reproduce with another few-bristled dark-lover. Genetics being what they are, the couple is more likely to have offspring with fewer bristles and a hankering for a darker habitat. The couple may very well have some multi-bristlers or light-lovers, but those will never be able to reproduce because once everyone is sent back to the lobby, those offspring will head toward the habitat where their number of bristles will mark them for removal. The bristle number is being used as a sort of surrogate for a trait that might affect survival in nature, such as the camouflage coloring of a moth. This survivability variable was missing in previous studies since in them the only thing being selected for or against was the choice of habitat itself.

Eventually, after months of weeding and 50 to 60 generations, Fry hopes to see a correlation between brightness preference and bristle number. Already, a weak correlatio
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Contact: Jonathan Sherwood
Jonathan.Sherwood@rochester.edu
585-273-4726
University of Rochester
25-Sep-2002

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