Fruit flies’ waxy coating provides definite waterproofing

Fruit flies' waxy coating provides definite waterproofingIt doesn't take much to begin feeling dehydrated.Miss a couple of drinks on a hot day and you'll soon experience the effects.But tiny insects are particularly at risk, thanks to their relatively large surface areacompared with their tiny body massthrough which they can lose fluid.For protection, they are encased in a tough exoskeleton, which can help to reduce water loss.In addition, their surface is smeared with wax, which could also minimise the amount of water they lose.However, no one had ever checked whether this layer of wax actually offers protection from dehydration or even alters the amount of dehydration that an insect can withstand.To find out whether the wax coating provides waterproofing, Kamar Nayal, Joshua Krupp, Osama Abdalla and Joel Levine from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada, painstakingly engineered special fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) that had lost the wax-producing cells and so were unable to produce the waxy coating.Then they tested how well 10.