<div>The common fruit fly, <i>Drosophila,</i> has long been one of the most productive of all laboratory animals. From 1910 to 1940, the center of <i>Drosophila</i> culture in America was the school of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges. They first created "standard" flies through inbreeding and by organizing a network for exchanging stocks of flies that spread their practices around the world.<br><br>In <i>Lords of the Fly,</i> Robert E. Kohler argues that fly laboratories are a special kind of ecological niche in which the wild fruit fly is transformed into an artificial animal with a distinctive natural history. He shows that the fly was essentially a laboratory tool whose startling productivity opened many new lines of genetic research. Kohler also explores the moral economy of the "Drosophilists": the rules for regulating access to research tools, allocating credit for achievements, and transferring authority from one generation of scientists to the next.<br><br>By closely examining the Drosophilists' culture and customs, Kohler reveals essential features of how experimental scientists do their work.<br><br></div>