In biological and biomedical sciences model organisms tend to be ones that are both cheap, and easy to breed and maintain in a laboratory. Often these organisms take up little lab space, as well as having quick generation times and rapid life cycles. They offer simpler systems to study the mechanisms underlying processes in more complex creatures such as humans, and allow scientists to understand things that can’t be studied directly – like genetics or human diseases.

This pattern contains the organisms: Ciona intestinalis, Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisae, Caenorhabditis elegans, Danio rerio, Peromyscus, Drosophila melanogaster, Mus musculus, Arabidopsis thaliana & Zea mays