Some readers may recall that we ran a cover on our January 2008 issue with an error that keen readers picked up immediately. After that experience we were pretty certain that some readers would question our use of what appears to be a common house fly on our current cover, instead of Drosophila melanogaster, the topic of several papers in the issue. Our keen-eyed readers have indeed noticed the discrepancy and notified us by email or posted about it on their blog here and here.

We acknowledge that it may seem as though an impostor sits on the ‘throne’ where the rightful heir should reside but as with all our cover art, we make cover decisions based primarily on artistic and visual impact rather than scientific accuracy. Our cover artist does a wonderful job creating or finding candidate images and we fell in love with this image as soon as we saw it and nothing she could do with the Drosophila melanogaster images we had on hand could match the weight and presence of the image. We felt anything else would fail to do justice to the weight of the content on the other side of the cover.

One reader kindly provided a photograph of Drosophila melanogaster that he took on a white background as an example of what could be done in a short amount of time and in five minutes of fun I mocked up a cover with it so our readers unfamiliar with Drosophila melanogaster can see what all the fuss is about.

No doubt there will continue to be occasions in the future when a scientific inaccuracy on the cover gives rise to comments from our readers and we welcome their comments even if we are unable to devote more resources to trying to ensure that covers are as scientifically accurate as they are aesthetically pleasing.