Department News

John Jaenike's Field Guide to Fruit Flies Documents These Surprisingly Close Human Relatives

October 5, 2017

“Fruit flies can reveal a lot about genetics, disease progression, addiction, crop parasites, you name it,” says John Jaenike, a professor of biology at the University of Rochester. Jaenike, along with Thomas Werner, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, recently coauthored an open-access field guide, Drosophilids of the Midwest and Northeast. The book documents the physical and behavioral characteristics of fruit fly species in the titular regions and is the first comprehensive guide to fruit flies published in nearly a century.