Publication details
FIM Track: a method for tracking Drosophila larval behavior in response to entomopathogenic nematodes.
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most widespread model organisms. It is used in various types of research fields involving genetics, immunology, developmental studies and others. There are also many research groups who focus on behavioural patterns of adults flies or their larvae. For this field a new method was developed called FIM Track (FTIR-based Imaging Method). It is based on frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) and allows us to observe groups of Drosophila larvae, which are crawling at the surface of a translucent agar gel. Thanks to newly developed software, we can track larval movement and measure parameters such as velocity, area of larvae, accumulated distance, etc. These parameters are commonly used for evaluation of Drosophila responses to various stimulus (heat, light, food, parasite, etc.). We used FIM Track to study behaviour of third instar Drosophila larvae responding to entomopathogenic nematodes. We observed some differences in larval behaviour when parasites were present. Larvae tried to avoid the contact with nematodes by moving faster. They also tried to get rid of parasites from the cuticle by bending more frequently, twisting and rolling. Thanks to FIM Track we were able to observe the behaviour of Drosophila larvae with great resolution in real time enabling us to have a very close look at the interaction between larvae as hosts and their nematodal parasites. Our research is supported by grant from the Ministry of Agriculture of Czech Republic (project no. QJ1610248). And by grant from The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT project no. 1317210) |