To find out, if there is a small effect of the Diazepam treatment, we tried to increase the anxiety by isolating the flies for 3 days before the behavioral test. 22 flies were tested, but similar to my results from my last post there is not a big difference in centrophobism moving and sitting. But surprisingly the control group showed a higher locomotion compared to the Diazepam treated flies.

The following diagram shows the behavior of Diazepam treated flies in the T-Maze, where they have to choose between light and dark. It is already known, that flies with clipped wings prefer the dark, so we expected to have an opposite effect, if we treat them with anxiolytics like Diazepam. We used a 5 mM Diazepam solution, the groupsize was about 50 flies and the experiment was repeated 16 times.

1 = all flies prefer the light

-1 = all flies prefer the dark

The treatment has nearly no effect on the photopreference, although the choice index of the drug treated flies is slightly more positive compared to the control group, but it’s in the negative range, which means most of them are still more likely to go to the dark.