Introduction:
Fly Drosophila in a great model organism that is used to show courtship behavior when a gene is mislocated and improperly expressed. This results in male courtship behavior between male-male and male Drosophila not being able to receive chemicals signals from the brain to repel sensory signals.
Methods:
The experiment consisted of putting blind mutants (ninaB360d or 1118) in daylight and dark environments to asses their courtship behavior towards intact females and decapitated female flies.
Results:
In daylight environment sexual arousal decreased in w1118 compared to Ore R males. In the dark environment w1118 have a “scanning strategy” that allowed them to behave like wild type Drosophila.
Discussion:
In both dark and light
Variation in selection pressures on the goldenrod gall fly and the competitive interactions of its natural enemies
Intro: Charles Darwin’s natural selection comes to mind when viewing the aggressive behaviors in crickets. This interaction comes into play specifically when competition for resources, such as foods and females, are scarce. Thus, only the organism most fit in the environment would be allowed to survive and pass on its genes. Pioneers of animal behavior, pave the way to understanding the why animals act the way they act (von Frisch, 1967; Lorenz, 1952; and Tinbergen 1951). With further integration between different biological organizations, we see the rise of new possible research, especially in crickets (Wong & Hoffman, 2010). The house crickets, Acheta domesticus, would normally display little to no aggression between males because of their natural behavior to live in groups. But when isolated for a length of time, ag...
Ross Wolff, Jennifer, and David Zarkower. "Somatic Sexual Differentiation in Caenorhabditis Elegans." Current Topics in Developmental Biology 83 (2008): 1-39. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .
More than two centuries ago, a Swedish scientist named Modeer described what appeared to be maternal behavior in the acanthosomatid shield bug Elasmucha grisea. He noted that the female did not fly away when an intruding object threatened her compact egg mass; instead, she remained steadfast and tilted her body towards the object (Tallamy). Unfortunately, this evidence, no matter how well documented, was not enough to convince countless people of the possibility of insects having parental instincts. The acknowledgement of parental behavior in insects was not a widely accepted idea for a number of years. Many people believed insects were too primitive to care for their young and that only when physical conditions became extremely severe were insects capable of expressing paternal abilities. The traditional view of maternal care is that it is an exceptional and relatively recent evolutionary leap forward (Tallamy).
"Persistent female choice for a particular male trait values should erode genitive variance in male traits and thereby remove the benefits of choice, yet choice persists” (Miller, Christine and Allen Moore). This phenomenon is know as the Lek Paradox and has puzzled scientists for many years. Throughout all species there has been abundant evidence showing continuous female choice of male traits, yet there is still no definite answer as to what allows for genetic variance to be maintained, and why a specific trait never becomes fixed. Many hypotheses have been theorized and researched, all providing some explanation as to how this variance in species is maintained, from traits signaling resistance to parasites, according to Hamilton and Zuk, to the hypothesis of mutational and environmental affects. Condition-dependence can also provide information as to how the lek paradox is able to exist; this hypothesis will be looked at in this paper.
Drosophila is a small fruit fly, it is about 3mm long. This insect is a model organism most commonly used in developmental biology and genetics. The Drosophila fruit flies are especially suited in experiments because of their short life cycle which consist of two weeks; they easily reproduce many offspring, and are also cheap1. The drosophila contains four chromosomes that can easily be experimented on, which allows in-depth observation. In this experiment, Drosophila melanogaster were used to identify the properties of Mendelian inheritance. The Law of Segregation states that allele pairs separate during gamete formation and randomly unite during fertilization and is carried by every individual. The Law of Independent Assortment states that each parent randomly passes on alleles to their offspring. Although, the Law of Independent assortment does not take in account the patters of sex-linked inheritance.
The average lifespan of a tsetse fly adult ranges from one to three months. The process of reproduction begins with the larva hatching from an egg within the female and the development of the young tsetse occurring within the uterus. The larva growth process usually take about nine days. While in the uterus, the larva get nutrients from fluid secreted from the female tsetse’s uterine wall. Proper nutrition is necessary because if under nourished the female fly will produce a small, underdeveloped and nonviable larva. On the other hand, adequate nutrition will ...
In mammals they use a few types of communication and one of them is called Chemical Communication also known as Pheromones. These chemical messengers square measure transported outside of the body and have an effect on neurocircuits, as well as the autonomous system with secretion or protein mediate physiological changes, inflammatory sign, system modifications and/or behavioral change within the recipient. There are physical limits on the sensible size of organisms using pheromones, as a result of at little sizes secretion diffuses far from the supply organism quicker than it is created, and a wise concentration accumulates too slowly to be helpful. For this reason, bacterium is too little to use pheromones as sex attractants on a personal basis. However, they are doing use them to work out the native population density of comparable organisms and management behaviors that take longer to execute, pheromones are employed in assemblage sensing or to push natural ability for transformation, sexual sequence transfer. In similar manner, the easy animal’s rotifers are, it appears, additionally too little for females to put down a helpful path, however within the slightly larger copepods the feminine leaves a path that the male will follow.
Transferring sperm depends on the species of damselfly because the sex organs are particularly elaborate and specific to the each species. Organs in the male damselflies that allow the end of its’ abdomen to attach to the back of the females’ head correspond between each individual species, making mating between separate species nearly impossible.
...le promiscuity." Nature Genetics 36.12 (2004): 1326-1329. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 24 July 2011.
The effect of light and dark environments played a role in the phenotypic frequencies of the Drosophila melangaster. In the light environment, the red eye phenotypic frequency in both males and females steadily increased, while the white eye phenotypic frequency for both males and females steadily decreased over time with each measurement. Figure 1 shows a steady increase and decrease in the phenotypic frequency of the red and white eye allelic frequencies of males, which is evident by the sideways "v" shape of the graph. The red eye allelic frequency was high in both males and females in the light environment. In the dark environment, figure 1 shows that the male allelic frequency does change for both white and red eyes. The female phenotypic
Elgar, Mark A. and Schneider, Jutta M.. "Sexual cannibalism and sperm competition in the golden orb-web spider Nephila plumipes (Araneoidea): female and male perspectives." Behavioral Ecology, Vol. 12, No. 5, 2001. 547-552.
The moths were tested (without a sugar reward) at five different light intensities ranging from mid-dusk to dim starlight, to see if they could pick the training color from eight different shades of gray...
Darwin’s research on insect pollination constituted specific interest in orchids and became a powerful example of natural selection over time. Orchids have evolved in various ways, primarily mimicry, that increases their reproductive success, as well as influence the evolution of other insects that mimic them. Most flowers are limited to attracting insects only with their bright inflorescences and fragrance, but orchids have evolved another tactic. Some flowers in the Orchidaceae family utilize a pseudo-copulation method where they mimic insects of the opposite sex for pollination. In addition, orchids have evolved even further to releasing the female pheromone that entices the male, also resulting in pollination. Both orchids and orchid mantises have become amazingly specialized to thrive in their environment (Dobzhansky 1973). Known for their detailed skill in mimicry, these organisms are ideal to study how visual and odor deception influence relations, specifically pollination. Mimicry has become an important strategy that these organisms have mastered, giving them a significant advantage over the competition.
A fly is an insect and lives in many common area of human community. This insect feeds on human foodstuffs and wastes where they can pick up and transport various disease agents. There are two potential cues that trigger aggregation in the common house fly. The first of these is visual attraction; that is, particular wavelengths of light, or colours, or shape patterns that the flies sense optically and find attractive. The second type of cue is olfactory; chemical attractants that stimulate the flies to move towards them. The fly picks up disease-causing organisms while crawling and feeding. Flies create some of the public health insect problem in human society. Flies create some major diseases such as sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and typhoid fever in the United States of America (Buchanan and Dura, 2005). Flies go through a complete metamorphosis. Metamorphous is the transformation of an insect from an immature form of larva to an adult from in distinct stage. There are four major stage in flies lifecycle which is eggs, larva, pupa and adult fly (refer to Figure 1 in appendix 1).