A weighty name change in view
“To sleep; to die, perchance to dream”. Or how about “What’s in a name?” Big news in the scientific world, for one of the smaller members.
The fruit fly, formerly known as Drosophila melanogaster will henceforth be known as Sophophora melanogaster. To be fair, the name change is still just a proposal, but in the world of nomenclature the possibility is very big news. After all, when the naming becomes untidy, the rest is just a matter of time and a downhill slide.
Why would I care? Well, because like so many others, I learned my basics of anaesthesia in a second floor school laboratory in central Ontario. Not one of my prouder moments: we killed a lot of flies that year, and then counted the remains with keen hand, sharp eye and a tiny paintbrush. Simply sexing wasn’t enough; we also racially profiled our test tube babies, into red and black. And then we did statistical analysis of the results and drew important diagrams showing the Mendelian tendencies. See how much I remember after all this time? Thanks, ‘Dad’ MacDonald.
The sweet smell of ether haunts me still. Too much and we could join our winged prey in a sleep on the desktop. I wasn’t in the top range of students, who were invited to do further research involving (so went the rumours) radiation and environmentally hazardous materials in an effort to spawn Frankenflies. Instead, I learned that keeping mounds of bananas in a school locker wasn’t particularly sanitary.
The real question remains. Once a name change is approved, how many generations of students will still be stuck with old textbooks containing incorrect data? Under current budget rules, probably a number inviting another sort of statistical analysis.
