 No matter whether model organisms are considered as scientific models or as something else, it is widely agreed that they serve many different purposes, only some of which are representational. The development of model organisms such as Drosophila (fruit fly), Arabidopsis (Thale cress), Caenorhabditis (roundworm) and the associated databases such as FlyBase, Wormbase etc. has had a profound impact on the way in which biological research is organized (e.g., Geison and Creager 1999, Clarke and Fujimura 1992, Creager 2002, Leonelli and Ankeny 2012). Furthermore, model organisms are also important sources of research materials such as genetically well-defined laboratory strains or genetically modified organisms without which cutting-edge biological experimentation is no longer possible today. Weber (2005) has introduced the notion of preparative experimentation to capture this role of model organisms.