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drosophila

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various small fruit flies of the genus Drosophila, especially D. melanogaster, used extensively in genetic research.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of flies, of the family Muscidæ, one species of which, Drosophila flava (the yellow turnip-leaf miner), is very destructive to turnips, the maggots eating into the pulp and producing whitish blisters on the upper side. D. cellaris attacks potatoes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any fruit fly of the genus Drosophila

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun small fruit fly used by Thomas Hunt Morgan in studying basic mechanisms of inheritance

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Drosophila, genus name : Greek drosos, dew + New Latin -phila, feminine of -philus, -phile.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the genus name Drosophila

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Examples

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hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. fruit fly
  2. pomace fly

variants (1)

Variants

  1. drosophilae

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