What's the importance of finding out the hereditary pattern of eye color in Drosophila melanogaster?

Students always use Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) as their experimental subject especially for observing the red/white eye colors %26amp; the normal/vestigial wings. Why is this so? What's the relevance?What's the importance of finding out the hereditary pattern of eye color in Drosophila melanogaster?
Fruit flies are well known laboratory models. They have short life spans, are easily raised in the laboratory in vials and on food formulas, and the sex of the animals can be told (even in the pupa case) so that mating experiments can occur.





Fruit flies show a variety of genetic traits that have different alleles, can produce large numbers of progeny, are easily counted and tabulated as to phenotypes, and can be handled even in the lower grades of school.





Not only do some eye color genes illustrate sex-linked inheritance, but other eye color mutants can show the different chemicals that make up the eye color.





Bottom line.... for students that think genetics, genes, alleles, dominance, recessive, sex-linked, linkage, etc. are just abstract principles in a book, .... actually working with fruit flies and counting their progeny, comparing the counts to expected ratios, and analyzing those results brings home to students that genetics is real, and it impacts humans as well as flies.