Quantification of food intake in Drosophila

Measurement of food intake in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is often necessary for studies of behaviour, nutrition and drug administration. There is no reliable and agreed method for measuring food intake of flies in undisturbed, steady state, and normal culture conditions. We report such a method, based on measurement of feeding frequency by proboscis-extension, validated by short-term measurements of food dye intake. We used the method to demonstrate that (a) female flies feed more frequently than males, (b) flies feed more often when housed in larger groups and (c) fly feeding varies at different times of the day. We also show that alterations in food intake are not induced by dietary restriction or by a null mutation of the fly insulin receptor substrate chico. In contrast, mutation of takeout increases food intake by increasing feeding frequency while mutation of ovoD increases food intake by increasing the volume of food consumed per proboscis-extension. This approach provides a practical and reliable method for quantification of food intake in Drosophila under normal, undisturbed culture conditions

The Effect of Chemical Information on the Spatial Distribution of Fruit Flies: II Parameterization, Calibration, and Sensitivity

In a companion paper (Lof et al., in Bull. Math. Biol., 2008), we describe a spatio-temporal model for insect behavior. This model includes chemical information for finding resources and conspecifics. As a model species, we used Drosophila melanogaster, because its behavior is documented comparatively well

HPC for improved efficiency on standard machine tools by using new fluid-driven spindles

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 241-246.The use of fluid-driven spindles is well known for machining various components, but not in real metal cutting. Machining of larger precision components as prototypes, tools and dies requires the use of relatively large machine tools and high-performance spindles. Usually these are mechanical spindles with relatively high power, displaying a rather low maximum speed of approximately 15,000 rpm. However, in semi-finishing and finishing with HPC conditions and in micro machining, the required rotation speeds are higher and the required power is lower. This paper presents sustainability and efficiency using fluid-driven spindles for HPC on standard machine tools with small tool diameters and rotation speeds of up to 90,000 rpm using air and 30,000 rpm using the coolant flow. The fluid-driven spindle leads to a significant widening of the application range of larger machine tools and to an improvement of productivity by higher efficiency and faster tool- and spindle change, respectively

Surface Core-Level Shifts of Ta(110) and W(110) vs. Alkali-Atom Coverage: Implications for theAlkali-Substrate Interaction

The change in the average surface-atom core-level shift (SCS) produced by submonolayer coverages of alkali adsorbates is quite small for both Ta(110) and W(110), less than 45 meV in magnitude. The small change of the measured SCS’s as a function of coverage decisively supports the covalent-bonding picture of alkali adsorption proposed by Ishida and Terakura

Ecology of Drosophila aggregation pheromone: a multitrophic approach

Many insect species use an aggregation pheromone to form groups with conspecifics in certain localities of the environment. This type of behaviour has a variety of implications for ecological interactions, both directly through the effect of the pheromone on the behaviour of con- and heterospecifics, and indirectly through the consequential aggregative distributions that may affect species interactions. The evolutionary ecology of the use of aggregation pheromone has received only little attention. Yet, these pheromones may play an intricate role in food web interactions by providing an accompanying information web.The aim of this thesis is to further our understanding on the ecological and evolutionary aspects of the use of aggregation pheromone in insects. By unravelling costs and benefits that arise from the use of aggregation pheromone in our ecological model organism, Drosophila melanogaster , we strive to answer why they use an aggregation pheromone and elucidate the ecological consequences of an aggregation pheromone in a food web context.In laboratory and field studies, we identified behaviours and interactions of the fruit fly D. melanogaster that were affected by its aggregation pheromone. The pheromone affected the distribution of adults, their eggs, competitor species and parasitoids. Moreover, a number of costs and benefits to the use of aggregation pheromone were indicated. In subsequent studies, the major hypotheses on costs and benefits were examined.A major benefit of using aggregation pheromone was shown to be aggregated oviposition. Aggregated oviposition enhanced the quality of the larval resource, as indicated by a higher survival of the larvae and larger size of the emerging flies. This Allee effect was characterised by a positive effect of adult density on larval fitness components, and may have arisen from the interaction between adult flies and micro-organisms (yeasts and fungi). Fungi antagonise yeast and larval development, while adults can inoculate yeast on a substrate and temper fungal growth. Larvae also tempered fungal growth, but an increased larval density did not result in an Allee effect but in competition instead.A major cost of using aggregation pheromone arose from an increased risk of parasitism. The parasitoid Leptopilina heterotoma uses the aggregation pheromone of adult fruit flies to localise the larval hosts, and based on this information this parasitoid can differentiate quantitatively at long range between substrates that differ in profitability. After arrival on a substrate, the pheromones no longer play a role in the host searching behaviour. A behaviour-based model was developed to predict the individual risk of parasitism for hosts in differently sized host aggregations. The functional and numerical responses of the parasitoids were combined with a flexible patch leaving decision rule for the parasitoid, to assess whether aggregation could also comprise a benefit to the hosts in terms of a diluted risk ( sensu Hamilton 1971). The model prediction reads that aggregation is not beneficial in the context of the Drosophila - Leptopilina interaction, and these predictions were supported by field data.In a simple spatio-temporal simulation model, the population dynamics arising from several modes of dispersal, food competition and an Allee effect were explored. The model is a first step towards a more extensive model that incorporates the responses of insects to spatially heterogeneous resources and chemical information (e.g., aggregation pheromone).The main conclusion from this thesis is that the aggregation pheromone of D. melanogaster plays an intricate role within a foodweb context, and that a variety of costs and benefits arise from multitrophic interactions. To understand the dynamic interactions in this and many other ecological systems, it is essential to gain more insight into the effect of aggregation pheromone on the behaviour of individuals.</font

Neural noise distorts perceived motion: the special case of the freezing illusion and the Pavard and Berthoz effect

When a slowly moving pattern is presented on a monitor which itself is moved, the pattern appears to freeze on the screen (Mesland and Wertheim in Vis Res 36(20):3325–3328, 1996) even if we move our head with the monitor, as with a head mounted display (Pavard and Berthoz in Perception 6:529–540, 1977). We present a simple model of these phenomena, which states that the perceived relative velocity between two stimuli (the pattern and the moving monitor) is proportional to the difference between the perceived velocities of these stimuli in space, minus a noise factor. The latter reflects the intrinsic noise in the neural signals that encode retinal image velocities. With noise levels derived from the literature the model fits empirical data well and also predicts strong distortions of visually perceived motion during vestibular stimulation, thus explaining both illusions as resulting from the same mechanism

Self-diffusion coefficients of charged particles: Prediction of Nonlinear volume fraction dependence

We report on calculations of the translational and rotational short-time self-diffusion coefficients $D^t_s$ and $D^r_s$ for suspensions of charge-stabilized colloidal spheres. These diffusion coefficients are affected by electrostatic forces and many-body hydrodynamic interactions (HI). Our computations account for both two-body and three-body HI. For strongly charged particles, we predict interesting nonlinear scaling relations $D^t_s\propto 1-a_t\phi^{4/3}$ and $D^r_s\propto 1-a_r\phi^2$ depending on volume fraction $\phi$, with essentially charge-independent parameters $a_t$ and $a_r$. These scaling relations are strikingly different from the corresponding results for hard spheres. Our numerical results can be explained using a model of effective hard spheres. Moreover, we perceptibly improve the known result for $D^t_s$ of hard sphere suspensions.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 3 Postscript figures included using eps

Diploid males support a two-step mechanism of endosymbiont-induced thelytoky in a parasitoid wasp.

BACKGROUND: Haplodiploidy, where females develop from diploid, fertilized eggs and males from haploid, unfertilized eggs, is abundant in some insect lineages. Some species in these lineages reproduce by thelytoky that is caused by infection with endosymbionts: infected females lay haploid eggs that undergo diploidization and develop into females, while males are very rare or absent. It is generally assumed that in thelytokous wasps, endosymbionts merely diploidize the unfertilized eggs, which would then trigger female development. RESULTS: We found that females in the parasitoid wasp Asobara japonica infected with thelytoky-inducing Wolbachia produce 0.7-1.2 % male offspring. Seven to 39 % of these males are diploid, indicating that diploidization and female development can be uncoupled in A. japonica. Wolbachia titer in adults was correlated with their ploidy and sex: diploids carried much higher Wolbachia titers than haploids, and diploid females carried more Wolbachia than diploid males. Data from introgression lines indicated that the development of diploid individuals into males instead of females is not caused by malfunction-mutations in the host genome but that diploid males are most likely produced when the endosymbiont fails to activate the female sex determination pathway. Our data therefore support a two-step mechanism by which endosymbionts induce thelytoky in A. japonica: diploidization of the unfertilized egg is followed by feminization, whereby each step correlates with a threshold of endosymbiont titer during wasp development. CONCLUSIONS: Our new model of endosymbiont-induced thelytoky overthrows the view that certain sex determination mechanisms constrain the evolution of endosymbiont-induced thelytoky in hymenopteran insects. Endosymbionts can cause parthenogenesis through feminization, even in groups in which endosymbiont-diploidized eggs would develop into males following the hosts' sex determination mechanism. In addition, our model broadens our understanding of the mechanisms by which endosymbionts induce thelytoky to enhance their transmission to the next generation. Importantly, it also provides a novel window to study the yet-poorly known haplodiploid sex determination mechanisms in haplodiploid insects