Fruit and Drosophila melanogaster

Overview

Objectives/Goals In my project I used fruit flies to see what fruits they preferred. I had five containers, one in the center of which five stretched out of, they were connected by pi-pets. In all four there was a different fruit. The fruits I used were bananas, apples, oranges and pears. First of all when I received my flies I put them to sleep with Fly Nap. After, I put all of them to sleep, I placed them in the center container. On the next morning I went to see if they had done a preference. They had. I had clear containers so I could see them. I counted how many were on each fruit every day. I kept all my data on a journal. I did this for thirty-five days. Since some days they go to different fruits, I had to average the amounts together. Every two weeks I had to change the fruits, when I did that I placed them in the middle container to see which fruit they would prefer. My results were very interesting. Some fruits gained flies each day and some started decreasing. At the end I added all the numbers and divided them by the number of dates to have an exact number. Here are my averages, bananas had an average of thirty-seven, apples had an average of six, pears had an average of zero and oranges had an average of seven. It was interesting because at the beginning my results were very different. Methods/Materials 1)Fruit Flies(to do my project); 2)Fruit (Bananas, Apples, Oranges and Pears to put in containers); 3)Five Containers(to place fruit and fruit flies in); 4)Four pi-pets(to connect containers); 5)Fly Nap(to sleep flies); 6)Gloves(to handle decaying fruit); 7)Sponges(on top of container so that the fruit flies can breath). Results My results were very interesting. I found out by my results that fruit flies prefer bananas better than apples, oranges and pears. The fruit that was disliked was the pear, none of the fruit flies went to it. My averages through out the whole time were bananas 37, apples 6, oranges 7 and pears 0. Conclusions/Discussion My hypothesis was wrong. My flies preferred to eat the fruit that rotted faster. They preferred the banana. I believe they preferred the banana because it had a very sweet smell. I believe the flies preferred it also because it didn#t become as juicy as the other fruits.

Competition history

• CSEF 2002 Zoology · Entry J1910

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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