Since the Canton S strain I used wasn’t a perfect genetic background strain anyway and didn’t fly properly, I kicked it out and replaced it with the wild type Berlin data I had collected just prior to the rut and rsh mutants. Now I can collect data for two projects in one go: I check the rut/rsh learning mutants if they still behave the way they should and with the wtb control strain and continue collecting data to evaluate their optomotor responses after training. So now the learning scores for the three strains look like this:

It still doesn’t look like rut is better than wtb, so I’m still skeptical that the strain is really what it should be. The rsh data also don’t look very promising, but I still need to get more flies with a negative preference before the training.

Suspicion: rut may not be rut

Carsten Duch is identifying the muscles involved in operant self-learning:

The first plot of each group show my results from the week before, and the ones beneath show the final results for red and blue light, after filling the sample size up to 20n.

Red light:

for comparison, this plot shows the control groups for the remaining 8n I had left separately:

Blue light:

The following shows the preference and avoidance towards Sugar and Salt for the Canton S larvae. In addition, the larvae were tested unter blue/room light, to see if there were any differences.

The first few rutabaga and radish mutants have been measured and so far it looks good: standard duration yaw torque learning – the situation all three groups should learn.

The following figures show the results of the preference tests with Canton S. I tested Pure vs Sugar and Pure vs Salt under two different circumstances. I tested the larvae in normal light and also under blue light.

Only a few more flies compared to the first week, but the difference between optomotor responses after punishing left or right torque, respectively, is starting to show:

These data suggest I should fill the groups up to a sample size beyond 20 if I want to use these data somewhere…