Drosophila is the scientific name for fruit flies. Those tiny insects that start to hover around your fruit bowl when you let the bananas get too brown? They're probably drosophila.
Drosophila, which live just about everywhere on earth, are the tiniest, fastest-breeding fruit flies, also known as "vinegar flies" or "wine flies." As these nicknames imply, drosophila are attracted to rotting or fermenting fruit. Because of their short lifespan and large numbers of offspring, drosophila are frequently used in studies of genetics. The Modern Latin word drosophila, the genus of these particular kinds of flies, means "dew-loving," from Greek roots drosos, "dew," and philos, "loving."