The Interactive Fly, developed and maintained by Tom and Judy Brody, provides overviews of various developmental and cellular processes, with the foundation information coming from Drosophila but with considerable integration of information from vertebrate systems as well. According to the Brody's, it has been developed to make the Drosophila world more accessible to the non-specialist. In addition to the overviews, the Brody's maintain gene records with links to FlyBase, and maintain lists of genes that participate in the developmental and cellular processes that are described.
FlyBase has developed a hierarchical view of the Interactive Fly entitled "Interactive Fly Hierarchy: cross-index to FlyBase genes". This hierarchy is accessible in two FlyBase directories: Allied Data and Genes. The hierarchy provides an overview of the Interactive Fly with links to the specific Interactive Fly pages, as well as gene lists with links to the individual gene records in FlyBase and the Interactive Fly. This permits searches for genes grouped according to developmental and cellular pathways and functions.
The file phylogeny.hqx is a stuffit, binhex file which encodes a hypercard stack (version 2) that depicts the phylogeny
of the family Drosophila. After receiving the file you should decode the binhex and unstuff. Most hypercard users
should be able to use it - command Q will quit. Additional radiations, updates, etc. are welcome.
Contact: W. T. Starmer, 132 Shady Lane, Fayetteville, New York 13066-1531, USA. Telephone: (1)-315-443-2154.
This tree is meant to be a qualitative guide, any quantitative information available can be seen below the tree diagrams.
Unless otherwise noted below the tree diagrams, these references have been used to create the tree:
1) The NCBI Taxonomy homepage
2) The Drosophila Phylogeny Hypercard Stack by Dr. William T. Starmer (see above)
In cases where pictures were obtained from the internet, each image is linked to its parent directory, so click on an image to see where it came from. The Drosophila melanogaster image seen on the top banner was obtained from Alberts, B., D. Bray, A. Johnson, J. Lewis, M. Raff, K. Roberts, and P. Walter. "Figure 1-34." Essential Cell Biology: An Introduction to the Molecular Biology of the Cell. New York: New York Garland Publishing, 1998. p.29. In cases where the genetic history is not available, is unknown, or is unclear, all members of the phylum, group, subgroup, or complex are shown to emerge from a common node.
Another good site to look at is TaxoDros: The database of Taxonomy of Drosophilidae Compiled by Gerhard Baechli, especially for primary paper information.
E-mail comments, questions, corrections or additions to Jennifer Kirkland (lkirkla@syr.edu).
The file species.txt is an alphabetical list of "valid" taxa in the family Drosophilidae. This file has been generated from the Systematic Catalogue on Drosophilidae and Allied Families written and maintained by Gerhard Baechli, Zoologisches Museum, University of Zurich. We thank Dr. Baechli for his help. The catalog includes 3386 "valid" species.
The species are listed in alphabetical order, each species being represented as:
Note that this catalog uses the revised higher level nomenclature proposed by David Grimaldi (Grimaldi, D.A. 1990. A phylogenetic, revised classification of genera in the Drosophilidae (Diptera). Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 197:1--139). This raises many of the subgenera of Drosophila, e.g., Drosophila (Hirtodrosophila), Drosophila (Scaptodrosophila) to the level of genera, i.e., Hirtodrosophila, Scaptodrosophila.
The NCBI is using the names in this database for the description of drosophilid species in GenBank and associated databases.
Contact for the species list:
G. Baechli, Zoologisches Museum, Universitat Zurich-Irchel, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland. Fax: (41)-(1)-364-02-95; e-mail: baechli@zoolmus.unizh.ch.See also the keyword index to D.I.S. articles that refer to specific drosophilid species, found in the News/DIS section.
A database of Drosophila researcher pedigrees by Keith Maggert (first shown in a poster at the 1997 US fly meeting). Keith welcomes corrections and additional information, which should be sent to him at the address given at the top of that page.