When people hear the word Drosophila, the image that pops most readily to mind (for those who know what Drosophila are) almost certainly involves scientists working in the lab. There's good reason for that, of course. Lots of Drosophila are used in the lab. Go to any university in the world that has a research program in the life sciences, and you will probably find at least one lab that works with these cute little dipterans. In the last year alone, xx papers have been indexed in PubMed with the word Drosophila in the title.
Given that, it can be easy to forget that Drosophila might have an existence outside the lab, and harder still to recognize that there might actually be something worth studying out in the field. After all, what could there possibly be out in the muddy, dirty field that doesn't show up in the nice, clean, dry lab?
Quite a bit, actually - at least for some Drosophila. The thing is, you see, not all Drosophila are the same. It turns out that if you look closely, there are thousands of different species of the little buggers, and these species are very diverse in how they look (morphology), how they act (behavior or ethology), and in how they make a living (ecology). You can get a handle on the morphological differences in the lab, but to really understand the behavioral and ecological differences, you have to go and study them where they live. Which is why, in the picture just below the fold, I'm standing in a forest on a grey and rainy day, smearing fermenting bananas on a bit of sponge tacked to a tree.
It's a messy job, but somebody has to . . . actually, nobody really has to do it. Unlike a lot of the research that gets done on Drosophila in the lab, it's hard to make the case that everyone will be a lot better off if we study some flies in the wild. It's unlikely that it will lead to spectacular medical breakthroughs. It's difficult to imagine that a better understanding of the field biology of Drosophila will do much to increase the global (or even local) standard of living. All studying Drosophila in the field will get us is a better understanding of how these insects live in the field. And how the way they live affects their evolution. And how their own evolutionary patterns relate to the evolution of other organisms. In short, by studying these guys, we can increase, in a tiny way, our understanding of the world we live in.
It's not the fountain of youth, but it's good enough for me. Besides, it's fun. There's nothing like standing in a cold rain, the reek of fermenting vegetation wafting gently through the air, flies buzzing all around, eyes burning from the effort needed to identify the one fly of interest on a sponge covered with the damn things to make someone realize just how lucky they are to be able to do all that, and still get paid.
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Here's an idea for a future post, rather than a question you should try to answer here in comments: Given the range of morphology, behavior, and ecology in those thousands of species, what is it that prompts us to put them all in a box marked Drosophilia? Is the genus a valid clade? (Hope I phrased that correctly - I mean is Drosophilia monophyletic?)
Great question, and I'll try to get a post up answering it in the near future. Actually, it will almost certainly have to be a multi-part post.
The short answer, however, is that Drosophila is not at all valid - it's definitely not monophyletic. However, unless an exemption to the rules is granted, any redefinition of Drosophila will result in D. melanogaster being removed from the genus. As you can imagine, that could cause quite a bit of confusion.
Mike, I've heard that, even though Sophophorans do not have precedence to the genus name (Drosophila), if the genus is split into multiple genera, Sophophorans will keep the genus name drosophila and the other side of the genus (Drosophila and everything else nested within) will get new genus names.
It appears you put a placeholder for a number in the following line and forgot to include the actual number in the final post:
"In the last year alone, xx papers have been indexed in PubMed with the word Drosophila in the title."
-David
Since you write about Drosophila you may want to confute PaV's misrepresentation of an article on flies and climate change (http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1538).
I would understand though, if you are tired of dealing with such crap.
That would certainly be the intelligent and preferable solution, but to the best of my knowledge the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has issued no ruling redesignating the type species for the genus (currently D. funebris, IIRC). Until/unless this happens, Sophorphorans cannot retain the name Drosophila if the genus is split.
And while redesignation of the genus name would be the intelligent and rational thing to do, it might not happen - remember Brontosaurus?