Both wild type and laboratory-reared individuals of D. subobscura are brown, with clear wings, yellow halters, yellowish legs, and red eyes.

The carina (tracheal cartilage that divides the two bronchi) of the fly is rounded, widening below, and the face is a paler brown color with grey pollinosoty.

The combs of the teeth are each aligned on the longitudinal axis of the first and second tarsal segments of the fore legs.

[3][4] Additionally, unlike the rest of the Drosophila genus, D. subobscura do not mate in the absence of light[5][6] nor do they produce courtship songs by wing vibration.

Three years later, the first description of D. subobscura appeared in an addendum to Gordon's paper through a short note written by Collin.

The note outlines a diagnosis of the sexes and differentiation of the species from D. obscura and attributes the D. subobscura name to Collin.

subobscura Collin” dates from 1936, because none of the papers that come before it include a description of the given species that would have satisfied nomenclature rules.

In 1938, two years after Gordon's paper, Dr. Eugéne Séguy had discovered a new species of Drosophila in Kenya, naming it D. subobscura.

[18] Its distribution spans over thirty latitudinal degrees, with its most dense populations residing in the western Palaeartic realm.

[19] Introduced populations of D. subobscura are found in the west coasts of Canada, the United States, and Chile.

In 1982, D. subobscura was discovered in North America in the city of Port Townsend, Washington, followed by the surrounding northern and southern areas, from Vancouver B.C.

In fall 1983, D. subobscura was found in the Central Valley, Davis, and El Rio areas of California.

[25] The genome of some Greek populations of D. subobscura has shown evidence of microgeographic variation, prompting a possibility that the species exhibits habitat choice.

[26] However, no evidence has been found to show that D. subobscura exhibits individual habitat choice, aligning with the fact that its well-studied inversion polymorphism is relatively inflexible and slow to respond to the environment.

[29] D. subobscura do not mate in the dark[30] and do not produce a courtship song via wing vibrations like other species of Dipterans.

[29] The tips of the male and female probosces can be observed to be brought into contact, where they alternate with back and forth motions.

In the case of D. subobscura, the gift is a regurgitated drop of liquid secreted from the male's crop, onto the female's proboscis.

[34] Preventing production and exchange of nutritional gifts among D. subobscura has been shown to decrease both male mating success and egg count among females.

[35] It has been shown that males that are in good condition produce more nutritional gifts, thereby increasing their mating success.

[38] Analysis of D. subobscura's salivary gland has shown that its genome mimics the Drosophila karyotype, consisting of a small dot and five large acrocentric rods.

Additionally, the genome does not show a chromocenter and contains high levels of chromosomal polymorphisms caused by paracentric inversions on all of the acrocentric rods.

[39] Polytene drawings and photomaps helped further the study of these inversions, allowing for the finding of more than 600 different linkages and genetic markers, which encompass a majority of the euchromatic genome.

[45][46][47][48][49] As D. subobscura, among others within its species group, has been reputed as a model organism for evolutionary-biological studies, its genetics and ecology have been scrutinized for more than forty years.

[50] These flies have served as favorable models ever since Theodosius Dobzhansky and his colleagues published their influential works in the 1930s.

[51][52] From the species' discovery in the Palearctic realm to its colonization of North and South America, it has attracted the interests of both European and American scientists as experimental material in evolution, biology, and ecology.

[53] The D. subobscura genome has been used to track global climate change by measuring the magnitude and direction of shifts in chromosome inversion frequencies in comparison to ambient temperatures at selected European, North American.

It was shown that genetic changes in D. subobscura at these sites can be used as a possible tool to track global climate warming.