“…Rather, we took advantage of the fact that ectotherm membrane fluidity changes in response to environmental temperature (Cossins and Prosser, 1978;Hazel, 1995;Hazel and Williams, 1990;Hochachka and Somero, 2002;McElhaney, 1984;Sinensky, 1974). Alteration of ectotherm membrane fluidity by modulating environmental temperature is well established (Cossins et al, 1981;Cossins and Prosser, 1978;Los and Murata, 2004;Sinensky, 1974), and this approach has been used to investigate membrane acclimation and adaptation in E. coli (Sinensky, 1974), cyanobacteria (Horvath et al, 1998;Los et al, 1993;Los and Murata, 2004;Vigh et al, 1998), crayfish (Pruitt, 1988), crabs (Cuculescu et al, 1999) and fishes (Cossins and Prosser, 1978;Hazel and Landrey, 1988;Hazel et al, 1998;Tiku et al, 1996;Zehmer and Hazel, 2003). The dramatic increase in tolerance that accompanied the inferred increase in membrane order suggests that modification of membrane physiology to counter the membrane-disrupting effects of ethanol could be as important as toxin metabolism in determining ethanol tolerance in Drosophila.…”