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.