THE EFFECT OF STRESS ON LEARNING IN MALE AND FEMALE INDIVIDUALS IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER IN T AND Y MAZE MODELS

Abstract

Many complex human-like behaviors are observed in Drosophila, exhibiting a detailed display of inter-male aggression and female courtship, self-medication with alcohol in response to stress, and even cultural transmission of social information. However, generally rodents, and especially bees and ants from among insects due to their visual place learning ability, are the living creatures that have been studied extensively in this regard in learning studies. In this study, the learning performance of Drosophila melanogaster in T and Y maze models and the change in learning level due to stress were examined. The performance of stressed and unstressed male and female Drosophila individuals in reaching the food and finding the exit point in T and Y mazes was investigated. The vestigial mutant strain of Drosophila melanogaster was used in the study. The wings of the vestigial mutant type Drosophila are genetically atrophied forms. When the success of female and male flies in both reaching the food and finding the exit point in T and Y mazes was examined, an increase was observed depending on the increase in the number of experiments. In both tests, an increase in learning performance was observed depending on the number of experiments in the flies that were not exposed to stress as a control group. However, this rate was lower when compared to individuals exposed to stress. These results show us that stress may have a positive effect on learning and that Drosophila can also be used in learning, stress, and short-term memory studies.

Keywords

• T maze
• Y maze
• Drosophila melanogaster
• Learning

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