How is aggressive behavior in Drosophila melanogaster regulated by nutritional state?
Aggressive behavior is linked to the acquisition of resources such as territory, food, and access to mates. Developing models to study aggressive behavior is of great importance because knowing the basics of this behavior can lead to numerous applications in human behavior. Drosophila melanogaster provides a broad field to study aggressive behavior due to the variety of experimental genetic methods that can be done. Several studies have focused on how biogenic amines modulate aggression, but little is known about how this behavior is regulated by nutritional homeostasis. Here, we developed aggression assays with pairs of isolated Drosophila melanogaster males of 3-7 days old. We starved them for 19 hrs and 43 hrs and compared them with a fed control group. We also did aggression assays with flies that had been manipulated for the insulin gene. We blocked the expression of insulin by crossing insulin-GAL4 flies with UAS-tetanus toxin flies, and over-expressed the insulin gene by crossing arm-GAL4 flies with UAS-insulin flies. Fighting latency was less in both starved flies for 19 and 43 hrs. We also observed that as we increased the starvation time, the frequency of winning episodes was less, implicating that these flies became less territorial. For the insulin experiments, we still have a small sample of the impaired-insulin flies and more aggression assays need to be done. The results we have so far showed that these flies have higher fighting latency. This was unexpected because we anticipated that flies with impaired-insulin will resemble starved flies and start fighting early, as seen in starved flies.
School:
University of Puerto Rico at Humacao
Department:
Biological Sciences
Research Advisor:
Gene Robinson
Department of Research Advisor:
Entomology
Year of Publication:
2007