Drosophila melanogaster, head and abdomen   Chernobyl   Themes de - en           paint them. The systematic work involved in painting the mutant lab flies trained me to detect morphological disturbances in Heteroptera leaf bugs, which live in the wild at the edge of forests and in meadows. One year after the catastrophe of Chernobyl, in the summer of 1987, I traveled to southern Sweden and to the southern part of Switzerland, known as the Ticino. These areas were heavily contaminated by fallout from Chernobyl. There I studied the offspring of leaf bugs that had been irradiated by rain when the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl hit Sweden in April 1986 and the Ticino in May. Even though scientists in the media had downplayed any risks to living beings from the Chernobyl fallout, I wanted to see for myself whether the radiation had caused the leaf bugs any harm. The sight of the Picture: Drosophila melanogaster, head and abdomen Head and abdomen are disturbed. Watercolor, Zürich 1987     < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >     Drosophila melanogaster, head and abdomen   Chernobyl   Themes de - en