Drosophila track CO2 in flight

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Drosophila track CO2 in flight Sara Wasserman1, Daniel Malkin1 and Mark A. Frye1* 1 UCLA/Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, United States Natural environments contain both attractive and aversive signals and organisms must encode both the direction and valence of these stimuli to control appropriate behavioral responses. Drosophila melanogaster tracks the spatial gradient of both attractive and aversive odors in flight. The need for adult fruit flies to locate and track both attractive and aversive olfactory cues is crucial for foraging, oviposition, and courtship. However, assigning a positive or negative valance to an odor can be dependent upon the behavioral or physiological state of the animal. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from fly food sources and oviposition sites. As such, CO2 emanating from a host has been shown to elicit attractive flight responses from mosquitos, but, paradoxically has been shown to be innately aversive to walking fruit flies. Here, we explore D. melanogaster in-flight olfactory behavior to CO2. We find that the valance assigned to CO2, a prevalent environmental stimulus is flexible and is determined by the behavioral state (walking vs. flying) of the fruit fly. Whereas we replicate avoidance responses in standard walking assays, interestingly, CO2 elicits active plume tracking during tethered flight. As previously reported, tethered fruit flies actively track an apple cider vinegar (ACV) plume. On average one animal will spend 7.4±0.7sec in an ACV plume over a 25sec trial. CO2 plume tracking is less robust when compared to ACV, with an average of 3.6±0.6sec spent in the plume. Overall, flies spend a significantly greater amount of time in an ACV or CO2 plume as compared to an air plume (1.8±0.3sec). This first look at in-flight responses to CO2 suggests that the fly assigns valence to environmental stimuli in a behavioral state-dependent manner. Keywords: Behavior, Carbon Dioxide, Drosophila melanogaster, flight, Odor Tracking Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (see alternatives below as well) Topic: Sensorimotor Integration Citation: Wasserman S, Malkin D and Frye MA (2012). Drosophila track CO2 in flight. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00133 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 27 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Prof. Mark A Frye, UCLA/Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-7239, United States, frye@ucla.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sara Wasserman Daniel Malkin Mark A Frye Google Sara Wasserman Daniel Malkin Mark A Frye Google Scholar Sara Wasserman Daniel Malkin Mark A Frye PubMed Sara Wasserman Daniel Malkin Mark A Frye Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.