How fruit flies came to launch the chromosome theory of heredity

Fruit flies were used by several laboratories between 1901 and 1910 for studies of experimental evolution at Harvard, Indiana University, and Cold Spring Harbor before Thomas Hunt Morgan found his white-eyed mutation that we associate with the beginnings of the fly lab at Columbia University. The major players prior to Morgan were William Castle and his students at Harvard University, Frank Lutz at Cold Spring Harbor, and Fernandus Payne whose ideas for working with fruit flies were shaped by his studies of blind cave fauna at Indiana University. Payne's interests were stimulated by the work of Carl Eigenmann, an authority on blind cave fauna, and William Moenkhaus, who introduced Payne to fruit flies at Indiana University before Payne moved to Columbia to pursue graduate work with Morgan and Edmund Wilson. The motivations of the laboratories differed in the theories used for their work. Castle spread the word about the utility of fruit flies for research, but Payne gave Morgan his first fruit flies for research leading to the discovery of the white-eye mutation.