Fly Vial Lab Report

In order to begin the experiment, culture vials for the flies were created. After wearing the proper safety gear, including but not limited to gloves and a lab coat, the fly food source was made using roughly an equal amount of distilled water and fly food. These were mixed until it had a mashed potato-like consistency. It mustn’t be too liquid-like as it will kill the flies; and should be solid enough to not slide around the vial. After obtaining and labelling a new vial, the food mash was placed inside, filling about one inch of the vial. Any excess food that was not at the bottom was cleaned off. Fly netting was placed as a U-shaped, with the bottom of the U barely touching the food. The netting was used to allow the larvae an area to prepare …show more content…
Finally, ten beads of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, were placed into the vial, which added to the nutritional value of the food. The vial was topped off with a cotton-ball and tape. Concerning the fragile existence of the flies, various techniques were used to safely handle and record them. First anesthetizing the flies were done for placing, and removing, the flies from vials. During the first week, one vial of (ee) homozygote and one vial of (++) homozygote flies were obtained. Then an anesthetizing wand was dipped into FlyNap. Prior to placing into the vial, it was gently tapped in order to remove any flies near the plug. With the plug still on, the wand was quickly placed into the vial by moving the plug slightly so that no flies would escape. Immediately afterwards the vial was placed on its side to reduce the number of flies falling into the food culture and getting stuck. All future vials were mostly handled on the side. The anesthesia was left for sixty to ninety seconds, allotting enough time for the flies to stop moving, but not …show more content…
During week two, the previous adult fly generation was removed. The vial was anesthetized, with the adults flies being removed and then played into the fly morgue, keeping the larval second generation within the vial. In week three, a new culture vial was created which was identical to the one made in week one. Then the adult flies were anesthetized and removed in order to be scored. Data such as phenotype observed frequencies between the wild types males and females and the ebony type males and females were collected during this time. The adult flies were then placed into the newly made culture vial, while the old one was properly closed and placed into biohazard for safe disposal. These procedures were repeated for four more weeks, until in week seven no new vial was made and all the flies either went into biohazard or the fly morgue. Data was collected and placed into each respected table, representing the observed phenotype totals for each fly generation. Using this data, it was then compared to an expected value of phenotype frequencies using an x2 table, which was used to conduct a chi-squared test determine whether or not the null hypothesis is rejected. A chart containing degrees of freedom probability values were used to analyze