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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Laboratory Maintenance of the Lower Dipteran Fly Bradysia (Sciara) coprophila: A New/Old Emerging Model Organism
Published on: April 19, 2024
Extremely small genomes in two unrelated dipteran insects with shared early developmental traits
Urs Schmidt-Ott1, Ab Matteen Rafiqi, Klaus Sander
1Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, CLSC 921B, 920 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA. uschmid@uchicago.edu
Abstract:
We discovered extremely small genomes (1C ~100 Mb) in the dipteran insects Coboldia fuscipes (Scatopsidae) and Psychoda cinerea (Psychodidae). The small genomes of these species cannot be explained by a fast developmental rate, which has been shown to correlate with small genome sizes in animals and plants but might accommodate the combined effects of other developmental traits, including small egg size, thin blastoderm layer, and long-germ development.
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