ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION For some people's tastes the fruit fly is the ideal organism to study developmental processes, including morphogenesis. Drosophila melanogaster is a higher eukaryote possessing an intricately complex body pattern. It has three pairs of legs and a pair of wings coordinated by highly sophisticated nervous and muscular systems. Input to its nervous system enters through hundreds of mechanoreceptors, proprioreceptors, and chemoreceptors, which decorate the body in precisely arranged patterns. Visual cues enter through compound eyes, each with more than 800 ommatidia arranged in such an orderly array that they have been described as a neurocrystalline lattice (1). Morphogenetic processes, such as cleavage, gastrulation, neurogenesis, and myogenesis, have their counterparts to be studied in the fruit fly. The name Drosophila melanogaster has come to be indelibly associated with genetics and the study of genetic variants. Once the organism of choice for studying genetics, Drosophila was revitalized as an organism to study the genetic control of development by such leaders as Bodenstein, Hadorn, Lewis, Poulson, and Schneiderman and their colleagues and students.
