9729191 DeSALLE Fruit flies (family Drosophilidae) have been used for more than a century as model systems to explore major issues in biological and environmental sciences. The Hawaiian Drosophilidae, an assemblage of about a thousand species, represent the premier example of founder-effect speciation and adaptive radiation on oceanic islands, but except for the picture-winged cluster of about 100 species, their taxonomy and systematics are poorly known. In this collaborative project, the systematic biology of the Hawaiian drosophilids will be reviewed, and a robust phylogeny reconstructed. The work will include field collections, descriptions of species, establishment of cultures, and collections of morphological, molecular and behavioral characters for phylogenetic analysis. The resulting analysis is expected to be definitive, and to support future analyses of developmental and behavioral pathways in these flies.
