Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investigation Of Neurotransmitter’S Knockdown Effect On Drosophila Melanogaster Female Aggression, Asil N. El Galad

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster) is a popular model organism in neurobiology. While aggression has been studied heavily in male drosophila, there's minimal research on aggression in female drosophila. Neurotransmitters influencing aggressive behaviour in female D. melanogaster are poorly understood. Various neurotransmitters such as dopamine, octopamine, and serotonin influence aggression in D. melanogaster Further investigation of the role of neurotransmitters on aggression is thus important. The purpose of our experiment is to observe the effect of the knockdown of dopamine, octopamine and glutamate on aggression in female D. melanogaster.