The Sex Lives of Flies

In 1963 a pre-med undergraduate student at UH Manoa got a summer job washing test tubes. The student was Ken Kaneshiro and the job was for the new Hawaii Drosophila Project. Today, Dr. Ken Kaneshiro is an eminent evolutionary biologist. He built his world-renown scientific reputation by studying the sex lives of flies. Of course, these flies are no ordinary flies. They are uniquely Hawaiian flies with an evolutionary history that is unsurpassed in the animal kingdom; they have chromosomes made for laboratory study; and perform remarkably elaborate mating rituals. The Hawaiian Drosophila is one of our islands great evolutionary treasures.

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