New experiments

on Monday, December 10th, 2012 3:01 | by Lidia Castro

I was trying to increase the differences between flies with clipped and intact wings, putting a paper covering the LEDs.

Results are not as good as I expected. The differences are lower than experiments done without this paper between LEDs and flies. I did experiments only with the big white LEDs (the ones which showed better results).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Category: wing clipping

8 responses to “New experiments”

  1. Sathish K Raja says:

    You could check beaming angle of each LED as well as wavelength range,might help..

  2. Julien Colomb says:

    hey, nice to see it is going forward. The description of the experiment is difficult to read and to understand, I have to admit that I cannot understand what result is what. I would be great to have a better legend.
    Are the experiments done in parallel? If they are, you may put them in the same graph.
    It would also be better to have always the y axis from 0 to 1.
    Maybe you may also think about calculating an index of wing clipping effect for each trial?

    Anyway, the response to the light from flies with clipped wings is still much higher than expected (we did expect a negative choice…) I would try different protocols (using only clipped winged flies, the same flies can be tested multiple times): let them 1 minute in the elevator before the test, test small group of flies (maybe try individual flies too), maybe also try different light source and application. I suspect that flies are super stressed and go toward the light for this reason…If nothing make them go away from the light, we will have to review the interpretation of our data.

    Great to see the project go forward, I hope you have so much fun doing the experiment as I have looking at the results :-)

  3. Lidia Castro says:

    I’m sorry for that, you are right!

    I put the results in different graphs because they represent different things.
    All of the experiments were made with big white LEDs, but decision time and voltage are different in each graph:
    – First two graphs: voltage of 2,6V
    – Last two graphs: voltage of 3V

    1st and 3rd graphs represent results when I let flies decide for 10 seconds, and 2nd and 4th graphs represent results when I let them decide for 30 seconds (I wanted to know if time of decision have an influence on the experiments).
    Now I will continue with 30 seconds, because with 10 there were more flies that didn´t make a decision.

    Before the test I let the flies 10minutes in the elevator, I know they need to be used to this new situation.
    And now, I am trying to do the same experiment but with smaller groups of flies, different LEDs (white, green and yellow ones) and a black paper with a hole covering the LEDs (to avoid the influence of the LED size in flies decision).

    Thank you for your advices, I will use them for the next experiments :-)

  4. Julien Colomb says:

    Very nice, it seems your plans cover all my advices :-)
    Try also a group of flies with only flies with wing clipped, in order to be sure they are not following the flies going toward the light. this would surprise me, but sometimes one get surprised…

    Are they really in the elevator for 10 minutes? There is no air coming through there, is it? So many flies in such a small chamber, they are probably suffocating then?

  5. Julien Colomb says:

    Just had a look at my pretests: I counted male and female flies separately, maybe you could do it too ?

  6. Lidia Castro says:

    Ok, I can count them separately, and also I will do some experiments only with wing clipped flies :-)

    And about the initial time in the elevator, don´t be worried, I made a little hole in the upper tubes, so I think they have enough oxygen.

    • Julien Colomb says:

      Then they are not for 10min in the elevator, but 10 min in the upper compartment, do I get it right? With the elevator, I mean only the moving part of the machine: you may try to let them recover from the banging for some time (15-30 sec), before bringing them to the choice point.

  7. Lidia Castro says:

    Yes, in the upper compartment. Sorry, I did not understand you well.
    Ok, I will let the flies in the elevator for 30seconds or 1minute.

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