This Atlas pictorially reviews the main events of Drosophila development. The first section gives a brief introduction to the stages of embryogenesis (according to Campos-Ortega and Hartenstein 1985), followed by a composite fate map illustrating the spatial organization of the different organ anlagen at the blastoderm stage. The remaining sections follow the development of the individual organs through embryogenesis and, in a cursory manner, postembryonic stages as well. Each organ, shown in schematic surface view and transverse section, is depicted at several representative stages of development. Derivatives of the ectoderm (CNS, PNS, SNS, trachea, epidermis) are treated first, followed by the gut and its annexes, whose origin is in part ectodermal (foregut and hindgut, salivary glands, Malpighian tubules) and in part endodermal (midgut). The mesoderm and its major derivatives (visceral musculature, fat body, dorsal vessel, somatic musculature) are illustrated next. The Atlas closes with an overview of the development of the gonads and reproductive organs. "This volume" citations throughout this Atlas refer to chapters in the companion book The Development of Drosophila melanogaster (ed. M. Bate and A. Martinez Arias, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1993).

Surface views of organs at embryonic stages are based on camera lucida tracings of whole-mount preparations of embryos in which particular organs were stained with specific markers. All tracings were done from embryos that presented a dorsal-lateral view. The camera lucida tracings, which contained the outlines of the particular stained organ as well as landmarks of the embryonic surface, were digitized with a Microtec Color/Grey Scanner and redrawn on an Apple Macintosh IIci computer, using Adobe Illustrator graphics software. Schematic transverse sections were drawn with the same program. Cell numbers shown in these sections roughly approximate the real number; for reasons of clarity, the shape of cells is idealized and intercellular spaces are exaggerated. The drawings representing postembryonic stages (third instar larva, prepupa, early pupa, adult) are based on preexisting figures and descriptions from the literature.

I would like to thank Drs. U. Tepass and J.A. Campos-Ortega for helpful comments during the preparation of the drawings. Previously unpublished work was supported by National Institutes of Health grant NS-29367 to V.H.