Measurement of Courtship Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONIn Drosophila melanogaster, as in many other animals, courtship is a series of stereotypical behaviors carried out by a male responding to multimodal signals. Because different experimental conditions can engage distinct sensory modalities that affect male behavior, courtship experiments need to be carefully designed. There are several ways to manipulate sensory inputs to the test male. This protocol describes methods for designing and conducting experiments that measure the various parameters of courtship behavior.

Mating and Memory: An Educational Primer for Use with “Epigenetic Control of Learning and Memory in Drosophila by Tip60 HAT Action”

“…If the female is receptive, she signals by lifting her wings, the male mounts her, and copulation takes place (Sturtevant 1915). Video examples of courtship behavior can be found in Ejima and Griffith (2007).…”

“…Articles to consider leading to the Xu et al (2014) article include Lorbeck et al (2011), Pirooznia et al (2012a, Johnson et al (2013), and Pirooznia and Elefant (2013a,b) An overview of basic mushroom body anatomy and an introduction to fly courtship behavior may be useful to begin discussion of the Xu et al (2014) article. A video of fly courtship, such as can be seen in the open access Movie S1 in Ejima and Griffith (2007) (http://cshprotocols.cshlp. org/content/2007/10/pdb.prot4847.full) will help stimulate student interest.…”

“…Confocal microscopy produces an image from a single focal plane without light interference from cells or proteins above or below that plane (Smith 2011). ual that prepares the female to be receptive and provide feedback to the male of whether or not he is courting an appropriately receptive female rather than an already mated female, a male, or an inanimate object (Ejima and Griffith 2007;Griffith and Ejima 2009). After identifying a potential mate by visual and olfactory cues, the male begins pursuit while performing intermittent bouts of a courtship song composed of wing vibrations.…”

Signs of Anger: Representation of Agonistic Behaviour in Invertebrate Cognition

“…(Ejima andGriffith 2007, p. 4847, Spieth 1974, 387-388) For example in the agonistic behaviour algorithm, the wing threat is simply the movement of the wings to a 45 degree position, which constitutes a threat display, whereas in the case of the courtship behaviour, the male fly will vibrate its wings so as to send an acoustic signal of fitness to the female, the so-called "Drosophila love song". (Ejima, ibid; Chen ibid.)…”

Estimating the speed of Drosophila locomotion using an automated behavior detection and analysis system

“…1) and rapid iterative negative geotaxis (RING) assays 2 have been used to determine the behavioral aging of flies. Metrics of the jump response to odor, 3 of the escape response, 4 of locomotor activity, 5,6 of free 7 and tethered flight 8 and of courtship and mating behavior 9 have been developed to screen for genes and uncover sensory networks responsible for these behaviors.…”