Tue, 03/02/2021 LAWRENCE — A new study in the journal eLife from researchers at the University of Kansas Department of Molecular Biosciences reveals that virus variants in fruit fly (Drosophila) populations separated by hundreds of miles have been evolving along a strikingly similar path. “Drosophila is a 120-year-old model system for understanding all sorts of different things — genetics, in particular,” said co-author Robert Unckless, assistant professor of molecular biosciences. “The idea was that in each of these isolated populations, host-virus co-evolution can happen somewhat independently.” Using rotten mushrooms, the KU investigators captured fruit flies (Drosophila innubila) in Arizona on three isolated “sky islands” — mountains that rise from the desert to form lush, isolated forest ecosystems. Then, they sequenced the genomes of hundreds of these individual fruit flies to confirm the populations were evolving with minimal-to-no gene flow between them.