Top five on Friday

Today's list is the top five most studied organsims. Well, kind of...

This top five list comes with data. I used Web of Science to search for Latin species names, not common names, listed on the model organism page of Wikipedia. So, values for some species, like Homo sapiens and Mus musculus, are grotesquely lower than they should be. Hence, species that should probably be listed, don't even make the list. In fact, like humans, they wouldn't even make the top ten.

1. Escherichia coli

2. Saccharomyces cerevisiae 

3. Drosophila melanogaster

4. Arabodopsis thaliana

5. Bascillus subtilis

Escherichia is king. A graph of the number of studies on each species.

For fun, I also looked the number of studies on each species where the word evolution was used in the title or abstract. It changes the list a little. Humans still do not make the list, but we make it into 6th at least.

1. Escherichia coli

2. Drosophila melanogaster

3. Saccharomyces cerevisiae

4. Arabodopsis thaliana

5. Caenorhabditis elegans

Escherichia still king, but its power is weakened. A graph of the number of studies on each species where the word 'evolution' was used in the abstract or title.

No marine species make either list and don't even make the top tens, they probably don't even make the top twenties.