Test Your Evolutionary Knowledge

Time for a fun game here at the Bayblab to give you a break from the usual highly demanding intellectual content! The topic is evolution and the subject is the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. As you should know D. melanogaster has long been used as a model organism in biology and has been particularly instrumental in most of the important advances in genetics over the past century. It is now being extensively used by researchers to understand human diseases such as cancer and Parkinson's.

So today's game is simple enough. I'll list off a bunch of organisms, and you say whether each is more, less or equally related (biologically) to us human beings than the fruit fly pomace fly?, D. melanogaster. So, for example, if the organism were the chimpanzee, the answer would be "more", as we clearly have more in common with chimps than fruit flies.

Everyone, including Creationists, can play. But no cheating please! That means no Google, Wikipedia or textbooks, etc. We just want to get an idea of what the average, highly intelligent Bayblab reader thinks. There's no penalty for wrong answers, but cheaters' comments will be deleted, they will be banned from the Bayblab for life, banished to PZ Myer's dungeon and forced to read Greg Laden's blog for the rest of their days. And Larry Moran will call you mean names. The winner will become very famous and enjoy 100 years of good blogging karma. The correct answers will be posted in a few days. Good luck!

Here we go:

1) The Starfishes (Asteroidea)


2) The Spotted Salamander


3) Palau stingless jellyfish


4) The Common Snail


5) Trichoplax adhaerens


6) Cloud Sponge, Aphrocallistes vastus


7) The Tunicate, Botrylloides violaceus


8) The Lancelet or Amphoxius


9) The roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans.


10) Yellowfin Tuna (Thunnus Albacore)


11) Market Squid