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Parasites & Vectors Nov 2014Insect evolution, from a free to a parasitic lifestyle, took eons under the pressure of a plethora of ecological and environmental drivers in different habitats,... (Review)
Review
Insect evolution, from a free to a parasitic lifestyle, took eons under the pressure of a plethora of ecological and environmental drivers in different habitats, resulting in varying degrees of interactions with their hosts. Most Drosophilidae are known to be adapted to feeding on substrates rich in bacteria, yeasts and other microfungi. Some of them, mainly those in the Steganinae subfamily, display a singular behaviour, feeding on animal tissues or secretions. This behaviour may represent an evolving tendency towards parasitism. Indeed, while the predatory attitude is typical for the larval stages of a great proportion of flies within this subfamily, adult males of the genera Amiota, Apsiphortica and Phortica display a clearly zoophilic attitude, feeding on the lachrymal secretions of living mammals (also referred as to lachryphagy). Ultimately, some of these lachryphagous species act as vectors and intermediate hosts for the spirurid nematode Thelazia callipaeda, which parasitizes the eyes of domestic and wild carnivores and also humans. Here we review the scientific information available and provide an opinion on the roots of their evolution towards the parasitic behaviour. The distribution of T. callipaeda and its host affiliation is also discussed and future trends in the study of the ecology of Steganinae are outlined.
Topics: Animals; Biological Evolution; Drosophilidae; Feeding Behavior; Male; Spirurida Infections; Thelazioidea
PubMed: 25404259
DOI: 10.1186/s13071-014-0516-4 -
Cold Spring Harbor Protocols Jun 2023The ability to modify behavior as a result of previous experience allows an organism to adapt to changes in its environment. Even innate behaviors, like feeding...
The ability to modify behavior as a result of previous experience allows an organism to adapt to changes in its environment. Even innate behaviors, like feeding initiation, can change if previously associated with a noxious stimulus. Here, we describe a taste memory assay pairing appetitive and bitter tastants, resulting in aversive taste conditioning. By training a fly to associate sweet sucrose applied to the tarsus with bitter quinine applied to the proboscis, flies quickly learn to suppress the reflexive proboscis extension to sucrose, providing a bioassay for behavioral and molecular plasticity. This single-fly taste memory assay may be applied to adult of any genetic background and allows for interrogation of the neural circuitry and molecular processes encoding memories while simultaneously measuring behavior. Unlike many other memory assays, this system requires few custom components, and therefore can be easily established in laboratories with minimal expertise in the study of fly behavior.
Topics: Animals; Drosophila; Taste; Taste Perception; Sucrose; Drosophila melanogaster
PubMed: 36787963
DOI: 10.1101/pdb.prot108093 -
Frontiers in Cellular and Infection... 2020Owing to the genetic similarities and conserved pathways between a fruit fly and mammals, the use of the model as a platform to unveil novel mechanisms of infection and... (Review)
Review
Owing to the genetic similarities and conserved pathways between a fruit fly and mammals, the use of the model as a platform to unveil novel mechanisms of infection and disease progression has been justified and widely instigated. Gaining proper insight into host-pathogen interactions and identifying chief factors involved in host defense and pathogen virulence in serves as a foundation to establish novel strategies for infectious disease prevention and control in higher organisms, including humans.
Topics: Animals; Drosophila; Drosophila melanogaster; Host-Pathogen Interactions; Humans; Virulence
PubMed: 32656090
DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2020.00214 -
Current Opinion in Neurobiology Oct 2020Animals engage in motivated behaviors, such as feeding and mating behaviors, to ensure their own survival and the survival of their species. However, the neural circuits... (Review)
Review
Animals engage in motivated behaviors, such as feeding and mating behaviors, to ensure their own survival and the survival of their species. However, the neural circuits mediating the generation and persistence of these motivational drives remain poorly understood. Here we review recent studies on the circuit mechanisms underlying motivational states in Drosophila, with a focus on feeding, courtship, and aggression. These studies shed light on the molecular and cellular mechanisms by, which key drive neurons receive relevant input signals, integrate information, and decide on a specific behavioral output. We also discuss conceptual models for integrating these circuit mechanisms, distinguishing between those for homeostatically-regulated versus non-homeostatically-regulated motivated behaviors. We suggest that the ability to trigger persistence of a motivated behavior may be a feature of integrator or apex/command neurons.
Topics: Animals; Courtship; Drosophila; Drosophila Proteins; Drosophila melanogaster; Neurons; Sexual Behavior, Animal
PubMed: 32563845
DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2020.05.002 -
Current Opinion in Neurobiology Oct 2020Spatial navigation is influenced by cues from nearly every sensory modality and thus provides an excellent model for understanding how different sensory streams are... (Review)
Review
Spatial navigation is influenced by cues from nearly every sensory modality and thus provides an excellent model for understanding how different sensory streams are integrated to drive behavior. Here we review recent work on multisensory control of navigation in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, which allows for detailed circuit dissection. We identify four modes of integration that have been described in the literature-suppression, gating, summation, and association-and describe regions of the larval and adult brain that have been implicated in sensory integration. Finally we discuss what circuit architectures might support these different forms of integration. We argue that Drosophila is an excellent model to discover these circuit and biophysical motifs.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Cues; Drosophila; Drosophila melanogaster; Spatial Navigation
PubMed: 31841944
DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2019.11.017 -
Sleep Feb 2024
Topics: Animals; Drosophila; Circadian Clocks; Sleep; Drosophila melanogaster
PubMed: 38069485
DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsad309 -
Cells Feb 2023Insect immunity is assorted into humoral and cellular immune reactions. Humoral reactions involve the regulated production of anti-microbial peptides, which directly... (Review)
Review
Insect immunity is assorted into humoral and cellular immune reactions. Humoral reactions involve the regulated production of anti-microbial peptides, which directly kill microbial invaders at the membrane and intracellular levels. In cellular immune reactions, millions of hemocytes are mobilized to sites of infection and replaced by hematopoiesis at a high biological cost after the immune defense. Here, we considered that the high biological costs of maintaining and replacing hemocytes would be a better investment if hemocytes carried out meaningful biological actions unrelated to cellular immunity. This idea allows us to treat a set of 10 hemocyte actions that are not directly involved in immunity, some of which, so far, are known only in . These include (1) their actions in molting and development, (2) in surviving severe hypoxia, (3) producing phenoloxidase precursor and its actions beyond immunity, (4) producing vitellogenin in a leafhopper, (5) recognition and responses to cancer in , (6) non-immune actions in , (7) clearing apoptotic cells during development of the central nervous system, (8) developing hematopoietic niches in , (9) synthesis and transport of a lipoprotein, and (10) hemocyte roles in iron transport. We propose that the biological significance of hemocytes extends considerably beyond immunity.
Topics: Animals; Drosophila melanogaster; Hemocytes; Insecta; Drosophila; Immunity, Cellular
PubMed: 36831266
DOI: 10.3390/cells12040599 -
Cell Reports Oct 2023Animals rapidly acquire surrounding information to perform the appropriate behavior. Although social learning is more efficient and accessible than self-learning for...
Animals rapidly acquire surrounding information to perform the appropriate behavior. Although social learning is more efficient and accessible than self-learning for animals, the detailed regulatory mechanism of social learning remains unknown, mainly because of the complicated information transfer between animals, especially for aversive conditioning information transmission. The current study revealed that, during social learning, the neural circuit in observer flies used to process acquired aversive conditioning information from demonstrator flies differs from the circuit used for self-learned classic aversive conditioning. This aversive information transfer is species dependent. Solitary flies cannot learn this information through social learning, suggesting that this ability is not an innate behavior. Neurons used to process and execute avoidance behavior to escape from electrically shocked flies are all in the same brain region, indicating that the fly brain has a common center for integrating external stimuli with internal states to generate flight behavior.
Topics: Animals; Drosophila; Drosophila melanogaster; Conditioning, Psychological; Avoidance Learning; Neurons
PubMed: 37782557
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113207 -
Annual Review of Cell and Developmental... Oct 2017Dorsal closure is a key process during Drosophila morphogenesis that models cell sheet movements in chordates, including neural tube closure, palate formation, and wound... (Review)
Review
Dorsal closure is a key process during Drosophila morphogenesis that models cell sheet movements in chordates, including neural tube closure, palate formation, and wound healing. Closure occurs midway through embryogenesis and entails circumferential elongation of lateral epidermal cell sheets that close a dorsal hole filled with amnioserosa cells. Signaling pathways regulate the function of cellular structures and processes, including Actomyosin and microtubule cytoskeletons, cell-cell/cell-matrix adhesion complexes, and endocytosis/vesicle trafficking. These orchestrate complex shape changes and movements that entail interactions between five distinct cell types. Genetic and laser perturbation studies establish that closure is robust, resilient, and the consequence of redundancy that contributes to four distinct biophysical processes: contraction of the amnioserosa, contraction of supracellular Actomyosin cables, elongation (stretching?) of the lateral epidermis, and zipping together of two converging cell sheets. What triggers closure and what the emergent properties are that give rise to its extraordinary resilience and fidelity remain key, extant questions.
Topics: Animals; Biomechanical Phenomena; Drosophila melanogaster; Models, Biological; Morphogenesis; Signal Transduction
PubMed: 28992442
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-cellbio-111315-125357 -
Fly Dec 2022The genus is one of the two Drosophilidae genera with Hawaiian endemic species. This genus is an excellent model for biogeographic studies since it is distributed... (Review)
Review
The genus is one of the two Drosophilidae genera with Hawaiian endemic species. This genus is an excellent model for biogeographic studies since it is distributed throughout the majority of continents, including continental islands, the Hawaiian Islands, and many other remote oceanic islands. This genus currently comprises 273 described species, 148 of which are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. However, most descriptions were published before efforts to standardizing the morphological terminology across the Diptera were made in the 1980's. Since research groups developed their own set of terminologies independently, without considering homologies, multiple terms have been used to refer to the same characters. This is especially true for the male terminalia, which have remarkable modifications within the family Drosophilidae. We reviewed the literature, in addition to other studies across the Drosophilidae and Diptera, compiled the English synonyms, and provided a visual atlas of each body part, indicating how to recognize the morphological characters. The goal of the present study is to facilitate species identification and propose preferred terms to be adopted for future descriptions.
Topics: Animals; Drosophilidae; Male; Phylogeny
PubMed: 34641736
DOI: 10.1080/19336934.2021.1969220