The Bactra Review   The Causes of Evolution

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Specifically, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, an animal which has remained the mainstay of genetics almost to this day, its position being rivalled only by E. coli and more recently the zebra fish. According to an old joke, someone once read a paper on human genetics at an international conference, and was rebuked at the end by a senior researcher who rose from the audience to demand, ``That's all very well, but what does it tell us about Drosophila?'' Alas, the same story is told about psychologists and rats, so it's probably apocryphal.