Biological and Chemical Physics Commons^™

Vibration Response: Mapping The Behavioral Response Of Fruit Fly Larvae To Mechanical Stimuli, Alexander Berne

2018 Entries

Drosophila larvae are capable of a wide array of simple, quantifiable behavioral responses to stimuli, which makes the organism a useful tool for deconstructing biotic behavior for wider application. To this end, an understanding of the response to mechanical stimulation remains relatively unexplored in this organism, and warrants investigation. This research aims to map the fruit fly’s behavior as a function of a generalized mechanical stimulus, namely, vibration.

Fruit fly larvae are placed in a light and temperature controlled environment, and observed crawling on vibrating agar plates with CCD cameras controlled through LabVIEW. Larvae are monitored for their instantaneous speed, …