Evolution of Learning Ability in Fruit Flies Essay -- Biology Fly Dros

Learning & Memory in Fruit FliesScientists submit traditionally viewed learning and memory as complex traits in the sensation that they are believed to be the net result of various contrastive familial and environmental factors interacting with one another. As it is not always practical or ethical to use human subjects in research, simpler model organisism are much used, and drosophila melanogaster (i.e. the crop fly) is one of the most hearty known and well studied in the biological sciences.AbstractTwo thousand fruit move of the species Drosophilia melanogaster were maintained for six months in advance any experimenting began. Flies subjected to experimentation were 14 days old and were conditioned to be better learners. Petri dishes alter with pineapple juice and orange juice were used on which the flies could lay their pelt. Quinine was added to one of the juices to turn flies away from that medium. By selecting eggs from the juice that did not contain quinine, flies who had learned to avoid the juice with quinine passed on their learning ability. Subsequent generations of fruit flies did actually induce smarter as demonstrated be their ability to more readily break up between the quinine medium and the regular medium as well as their ability to remember this association for a longer period of time.Methods observational Design Base PopulationAll flies used in Mery & Kaweckis experiment were of the species Drosophilia melanogaster. The experimental population was derived from 2000 flies and maintained for six months before any experimenting began. All flies subjected to experimentation were 14 days old. experimental Evolution DesignBefore any testing was actually con... ... the different genetics of every individual fly, but in general, it is possible to pronounce that it did improve. This proves the point that learning is favored when environmental factors and other cues play a significant role. The experiment also showed that the learning ability to modify oviposition substrate choice has direct correlations with fitness. Single-locus large-effect mutants would be the best approach for this experiment, but the assemblage wanted to simulate learning ability in a pictorial environment so they chose to use a variegated sample.ReferencesMery, Frederic & Tadeusz J. Kawecki. Experimental evolution of learning ability in fruit flies. Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci. 99.22 (2002) 14274-14279. Papaj, Daniel R. and Emilie C. Snell-Rood. Memory flies rather from flies that learn faster. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 104.34 (2007) 13539-13540.