The second week of my research was similar to my first week, only I did the protocols by myself.  On Monday I attended a professional development for my district. It was in Brazos Bend Park, sadly I did not hike but instead listened to lessons plans that could not be applied to my classroom. I would have preferred to be in my lab!

Last week I started my first set of crosses. It did not go as planned, because we over estimated how my male flies we were going to need of one genotype. I ended up making half the crosses I needed. Fast forward to this week, I took my first set of crosses and transferred the mothers since I was testing maternal effects. I then poured the males into the fly morgue since I no longer needed them.

The next day in the lab I needed to “clear” the racks I needed. My mentor picked four of the best genotypes for my research. To clear I would take the fly vial and dump the flies into the clear vessel. This would give me virgin flies in the morning.

I was very happy with my first batch of crosses that were made, here a picture of one of my healthy fly vials

Here are my crosses for the first and second week…

I used a device called a fly pad that pushes CO2 out of the pad and gun. This is were I count flies and separate males and females.

I have not started the actual research yet, but I am hoping I will this coming week!