If you think life is complex for modern women, be happy you’re not a fruit fly.

One of the advantages of reading Anne of Carversville is that we try to weave existing research into new stories. We’re tracking the whole story on female fruit flies for readers, including the impact of big wings on fruit fly fertility.

An ordinary female fruit fly has major problems. When she is spectacular — the equivalent of a Victoria’s Secret Angel fruit fly with majestic wings that attract every male on the garden block — her life is downright grim.

The new research focuses on the dire necessity that fruit fly girls act like a girl and — for heaven’s sake — smell female. If a guy fruit fly thinks you’re male, he’ll fight you and probably kill you.

Researchers at Harvard manipulated a gene that governs a fruit fly’s body-surface, producing gender-specific hydrocarbons, or pheromones. The same gene governs sex-linked behavioral cues that are governed by the fly’s brain.