Flying the fly - odor-driven behavior in Drosophila

Flight is obviously an elementary behaviour for an animal called fly. A functional, discriminative wind tunnel bioassay therefore is the basis to study numerous open questions concerning the neuroethology and chemical ecology of Drosophila. Commonly used bioassays, assessing attraction behaviour in small containers, are not sufficient to analyse the high sensitivity of the olfactory system, and the complex behaviour of fruit flies. We have developed a wind tunnel bioassay to close this experimental gap. We here report first results on the the identification and characterization of odour cues encoding upwind flight attraction in Drosophila