Drosophila Egg-Laying Preference Assay: A Method to Test Decision-Making in Flies

Abstract

Source: Gou, B., et al. High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster. J. Vis. Exp. (2016).

Drosophila females choose between substrates and select sites that are attractive for egg-laying. This video describes a behavioral assay that tests their decision-making, called the egg-laying preference assay. The featured clip demonstrates the procedure with a custom-built setup, which enables researchers not only to test the behavior of many females at the same time but is also compatible with video recording and optogenetic setups.

Protocol

This protocol is an excerpt from Gou et al., High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster, J. Vis. Exp. (2016).

1. Chamber Construction, Assembly, Assay Setup

1. Have a machine shop build acrylic egg-laying chambers (Figure 1A-D). The engineering drawing of different pieces were shown in Supplementary Figure 1-3. High resolution pictures can also be found here (http://www.rebeccayang.org/pdf/chamber%20design.pdf).....

Results

Figure 1: Egg-laying Chambers and Egg-laying Protocol. (A) Fully assembled egg -laying chamber. (B) Disassembled pieces. a: the loading piece (top), b: the divider piece (middle), c: the substrate (bottom) piece. Engineering drawings of these pie.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
UltraPure Agarose	Invitrogen	16500-500
Sucrose	Sigma	S0389
Water bath	Fisher	15-462-6Q
Egg-laying chambers	Custom Built
Fly vials (narrow)	Genesee	32-116BC