“Melanogaster Catch The Fly” (MCTF) is an international citizen science initiative linking molecular biology, evolutionary research, and inclusive education. It engages teachers, students, farmers, and rural residents across Europe and Latin America in Adaptative Genomics* research. Currently, more than 20 high schools from Spain, Germany, Ukraine, Serbia, Colombia, and Honduras actively participate, with expansion underway in France and other countries. Students and teachers collect and classify Drosophila melanogaster in agricultural landscapes, generating unique datasets that contribute directly to the European Drosophila Population Genomics Consortium, a network of 73 laboratories across 28 countries (DrosEU.net) to study natural population genomic adaptation in space and time.
MCTF’s strength lies in combining hands-on participation, technological innovation, and equity-building in science. Schools receive tailored materials to study adaptation, climate change impacts, and the importance of fruit flies in genetic research. The project also promotes gender equality, highlighting women leaders in molecular biology and encouraging young women to pursue STEM careers through the co-design of hardware and software solutions.
Through direct citizen involvement, #MelanogasterCTF brings science closer to students and teachers from both rural and other areas in both Spain and Europe, while contributing to the advancement of frontier science* at the international level. The main objective of this scientific project is to understand how organisms adapt to the environment. To achieve this, we work with a genetic model organism: fruit flies from the genus Drosophila. You can read more about them in the Scientific Aim and Why the fruit fly sections.
For students and teachers, #MelanogasterCTF provides an opportunity to increase their scientific, technological, and 4C capacities (collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking), through a hands-on project that empowers them as agents and enablers of a necessary global change. In turn, it is a synergistic project, which facilitates, accelerates, and economizes scientific research.
If you are a teacher or student and want to explore or experiment with your class, you cannot miss this opportunity!
From #MelanogasterCTF CS, we encourage the current participating educational centers, teachers and students to involve their friends, neighbors, agents from the agricultural sector and related entities (e.g. environmental protection), since this allows expanding the magnitude of the project and the actions carried out by the participants in the project. Finally, we recall that the project is open to other countries, both in Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world.
Participants in the #MelanogasterCTF citizen science project have relevant teaching materials on biology and genetics at their disposal, prepared by González Lab and the science outreach platform La Ciència Al Teu Món (LCATM), so they can prepare themselves and help spread the scientific spirit and their findings to their neighbors and friends. The project has many activities that allow participation in many different ways, from students and teachers in secondary schools to university centers; and from the most rural areas to the most urban areas of Spain, Europe, and the rest of the world.
Key complementary activities include:
- Track The Fly: Citizen-designed and implemented low-cost weather stations to monitor environmental variables and air quality in sampling fields.
- Magni Fly: Citizen-designed device for smartphone-based stereoscopic magnifier enabling taxonomy work in under-resourced schools.
- Code The Fly: A bioinformatics module introducing programming and big data analysis to high school and early university students.
- Citizen Fly Lab: Mobile molecular biology lab that allows carrying out PCR experiments in rural and urban schools, to validate new Drosophila mutations.
- International exchange and dissemination events such as Meet and Fly! and Teach and Fly (teacher co-creation workshops). Led by women researchers in leadership roles, reinforcing gender equity and inclusivity in molecular biology and evolutionary research.
- Time Flies, exhibition and repository of local knowledge and collective memory: This initiative enables participants to document and share cultural, environmental, and social aspects of scientific research and rural and agricultural practices.
- AI Co-Fly: Involves the community in developing an Artificial Intelligence technology designed to identify and classify Drosophila species, showcasing AI’s application in citizen science, adaptation genomics, taxonomy, and biodiversity monitoring.
MelanogasterCTF 1st sampling and classification campaign 2016 (video)
The Melanogaster Catch The Fly! (MCTF) citizen science project is led by the Evolutionary and Functional Genomics Laboratory of the Institut Botànic de Barcelona (CSIC – CMCNB) and the Sci-Comm Association La Ciència Al Teu Món (LCATM), in collaboration with the Department of Genetics and Microbiology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). MCTF also has the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology – Ministry of Science and Innovation (FECYT), the European Consortium for Drosophila Population Genomics (DrosEU), and the European Research Council (ERC).
