Aug 21, 2025
Egg-to-adult viability assay
- Cassidy Schneider1,
- Spencer Koury1,
- Laurie Stevison1
- 1Auburn University
Collection Citation: Cassidy Schneider, Spencer Koury, Laurie Stevison 2025. Egg-to-adult viability assay. protocols.io https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.4r3l264qqv1y/v1
Manuscript citation:
Schneider C, Koury S, Stevison L. 2025. Protocol: An absolute egg-to-adult viability assay in Drosophila melanogaster. microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.001656
License: This is an open access collection distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: In development
We are still developing and optimizing this collection
Created: April 08, 2025
Last Modified: August 21, 2025
Collection Integer ID: 126319
Keywords: Drosophila, egg counting, survival, Fiji, Raspberry Pi, adult viability assay egg, count egg, eggs in polypropylene vial, useful in drosophila study, drosophila study, standard fly media with blue food dye, egg, mutant marker, using mutant marker, blue food dye, standard fly media, reproductive output, organismal fitness, measure of organismal fitness, account reproductive output, polypropylene vial, process image, raspberry pi camera
Funders Acknowledgements:
NIH
Grant ID: R35GM147501
Abstract
Egg-to-adult viability is a measure of organismal fitness that takes into account reproductive output as well as survivorship across life stages. It is especially useful in Drosophila studies when using mutant markers that are visible only in adults. Here, we present 3 protocols that can be used to count eggs in a way that also enables quantification of the number of adults. These protocols describe how to (A) make standard fly media with blue food dye for taking high contrast photos, (B) use a Raspberry Pi camera to directly photograph eggs in polypropylene vials where they are laid, and (C) process images and count eggs using a point-and-click approach in Fiji.
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