Fruit Fly Facts:
- Fruit flies are very prolific insects. They live for several weeks and just eat and breed. What a life (albeit a short one).
- A female, once fertilized, may lay 30 to 50 eggs per day throughout her lifetime.
- The males are the smaller of the two sexes.
- Drosophila melanogaster is commonly abbreviated as D. melanogaster.
- Drosophila are the most commonly used insects to study genetic traits and chromosome mapping.
- Assuming a 50% male to female ratio, and a female laying 500 or more eggs in her lifetime, 30 days of unchecked fruit fly population could create, well, one huge number of fruit flies.