A proposal to reorganize the fruit fly genus - Drosophila may remove its most famous member

If you change the name of the celeb, 350 other names change along with it. If you insist on keeping the name, 1,100 names will change... a problem.

The world of genetics uses model animals for research. One of the more commonly used animals is the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Taxonomists, people whose business it is to arrange the relationships between different species of living creatures, noticed that in light of new information, a reorganization must be done among the fruit flies. It happened that the celebrity in the group was forced to change his name - and the fans did not remain silent. An official protest was organized, proposals were submitted, discussions were held and then... at the beginning of April 2010 the fateful decision was made at the World Conference on Zoological Names located in London. The conference spent more than two years debating a proposal calling for the name of the celebrity fly to be retained while the genus Drosophila, which contains at least 1,450 species, is reorganized.

As published inNature magazine website news On April 7, the conference rejected the proposal to keep the celebrity's name, thus paving the way for a new name for the famous fruit fly and hundreds of related species. This is a weighty decision for researchers in the field. Imagine a situation where a decision is made to rewrite history so that people are only called by their original names - names like Bob Dylan, George Orwell and Ben Gurion will disappear and we will have to get used to the new names.

The thing is, if you change the name of the celeb, 350 other names change along with it. If you insist on keeping the name, 1,100 names will change... a problem. The new name will probably be Sophophora melanogaster but it is not yet final.

What will the scientists do? At least in the beginning the fly will enjoy two names, the old and the new will be valid at the same time in terms of usage but only the new will be taxonomically correct. In the future, a new generation of scientists will arrive who will get used to the new name and the old name will be relegated to the pages of history.

The photo was taken by André Karwath aka Aka