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Drosophila Thermoregulatory Navigation
Location: 71
Mentor: Dr. Mason Klein
Thermoregulation is the physiological and behavioral maintenance of thermal homeostasis. Because temperature profoundly affects virtually all internal processes, remaining in an optimal thermal zone is paramount for animals to maximize their survival and overall Darwinian fitness. Drosophila melanogaster is a tractable model organism that requires little maintenance, making it ideal for studying thermoregulation. As ectotherms, Drosophila heat production is regulated by the environment. Consequently, Drosophila have an advanced thermoregulatory behavioral repertoire to respond to even minute temperature changes. Previous studies have found that Drosophila larvae navigation can be modeled as a random walk biased towards favorable conditions by probabilistically modulating the rate, size, and direction of their turns while crawling. Thus far, larval thermoregulatory behavior has primarily been studied with spatial thermal gradients, rather than temporally-varying thermal stimulation. Here, we aim to more fully characterize Drosophila thermoregulatory behavior across their non-nociceptive thermal range through stimulation with sinusoidal temperature functions. Our results will outline Drosophila warming (temperature increasing) and cooling (temperature decreasing) behaviors and determine whether they are consistent across their nonlethal thermal zone. Our broader goal is to develop predictive models for behavior from sensory input. The sinusoidal data will serve as tests to verify these models for future use in behavioral studies of multisensory integration. Investigating thermal responses in simple systems like Drosophila is critical to developing a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that govern thermoregulation across all motile organisms.
