Drosophila photography
Author: Dr Nicola White
Co-author: Dr Tom Price
Domain: www.drosophoto.com
Company: University of Liverpool
Funding body: NERC and University of Liverpool

Topic: A resource of photographs for the purpose of education and outreach for Drosophila researchers and enthusiasts.

About:

Dr Price and I were working on a relatively unique NERC grant that maximised the use of many species, requiring a stock of 47 different Drosophila species in the lab.
This resulted in a large amount of culturing knowledge and a great opportunity to create an online resource of this knowledge, combined with photos of those species. Our
website aims to be a resource for new and old entomologists interested in Drosophila. The photographs will aid in identification, particularly between closely related
species which can be difficult to distinguish. All species have images of the dorsal, lateral and ventral view of both males and females to aid with training of new
entomologists on identification of different sexes. Where available, there are also images of the immature stages.

Equipment:
	Leica M50 with C mount
	Canon 1100D with microscope adaptor
	2 x LED E27 Bulbs (65W,5500K)

Method:
The bulk of these photos had to be taken within a very short time period (3 weeks) due to the ending of a contract and leaving for a new positiion. I made the choice to
photograph many species without mounting, only using CO2 to anaesthetise. Using focus stacking greatly improves the overall quality and clarity of the photos. Each final
image comprises anything from 10 - 100 photos taken in raw CR2 format, manually changing the microscope focus and stacked using Helicon Focus Stacker. With using
anaethetised flies instead of dead flies, it meant the stacked photos weren't always perfect. If the individual moved, in particular wiggling legs, it would cause the stack
to blur. Depending how much the fly moved, I either had to start again, or make the most of what I had. This also meant that the flies are not staged, the photos were taken
in whatever way they fell asleep, legs curled, wings flat, heads tilted or proboscis sticking out. I just photographed them however they slept.


Related publication:
Temperatures that sterilize males better match global species distributions than lethal temperatures.
SR Parratt, BS Walsh, S Metelmann, N White, A Manser, AJ Bretman, ... Price, TAR
Nature Climate Change 11 (6), 481-484


Related websites of interest:
Taxonomy -  https://www.taxodros.uzh.ch/
Genetics -  http://flybase.org/
Other researchers with some photos/information on their websites: 
    Darren Obbard    https://obbard.bio.ed.ac.uk/index.html
    Nicolas Gompel   http://gompel.org/