Responses of differentDrosophilaspecies to temperature changes

Abstract

Temperature is a critical environmental variable that affects the distribution, survival and reproduction of most animals. Although temperature receptors have been identified in many animals, how these receptors respond to temperature is still unclear. Here, we describe an automated tracking method for studying the thermotactic behaviors of Drosophila larvae and adults. We built optimal experimental setups to capture behavioral recordings and analyzed them using free software, Fiji and TrackMate, which do not require programming knowledge. Then, we applied the adult thermotactic two-choice assay to examine the movement and temperature preferences of nine Drosophila species. The ability or inclination to move varied among these species and at different temperatures. Distinct species preferred various ranges of temperatures. Wild-type D. melanogaster flies avoided the warmer temperature in the warm avoidance assay and the cooler temperature in the cool avoidance assay. Conversely, D. bipectinata and D. yakuba did not avoid warm or cool temperatures in the respective assays, and D. biarmipes and D. mojavensis did not avoid the warm temperature in the warm avoidance assay. These results demonstrate that Drosophila species have different mobilities and temperature preferences, which will benefit further research in exploring molecular mechanisms of temperature responsiveness.

Functional labeling of individualized postsynaptic neurons using optogenetics and trans-Tango in Drosophila (FLIPSOT)

“…HCs are necessary and sufficient to guide rapid warm avoidance [ 38 , 41 , 52 ]. We first used HC-Gal4 to express FLIPSOTi to identify individual PNs necessary for rapid warm avoidance ( Fig 5A ).…”

Performance Comparison of Five Methods Available in ImageJ for Bird Counting and Detection from Video Datasets

“…TrackMate is an ImageJ plugin developed by Tinevez et al for particle tracking based on the particle pixel size [42]. Although it was built for particle tracking, in application, it has also been used for tracking blood cells [43,44], lysosomes [45,46], and even Drosophila movement [47,48].…”