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VOL. 6, ISSUE 4 (2021)
Negative geotaxis in Drosophila species during priming and challenge infections of E. coli and S. aureus
Authors
Ramachandra Naik Meghashree, Kakanahalli Nagaraj
Abstract
There is lot of emerging evidence on the association between locomotor behavior and bacterial infections in Drosophila spp. However, the role of immune priming in the regulation of locomotor behavior has been limited. The negative geotaxis was explored here as a parameter to study the locomotor behavior during challenge infections of E. coli and S. aureus in D. melanogaster and D. ananassae. The Drosophila spp. were initially immune primed with infectious dose and in another set, flies were primed with heat-killed bacteria and challenged with subsequent infection by a homologous bacteria at live lethal dose. The number of flies moving against gravity above 3 cm from the bottom of the vial was recorded. The results showed that infection has reduced the geotaxis movement irrespective of bacterial and fly species used. The D. melanogaster showed relatively improved geotaxis movement after immune priming or challenge infections suggesting that it is more tolerant to infection than D. ananassae. Further, S. aureus infected flies had reduced climbing movement than E. coli infected flies. Importantly, in challenge E. coli infections, the geotaxis movement was significantly higher in immune primed flies than non-primed live lethal dose injected flies. This could be possibly prefixed to the production of putative cecropin A-like peptide in these E. coli immune-primed flies. Finally, our report identified the bacteria and fly species-specific variation in geotaxis behavior in challenge infected D. melanogaster and D. ananassae flies. Also, a better climbing movement was observed in E.coli than S. aureus-infected flies. Further studies are needed to confirm the role of antimicrobial proteins in varied negative geotaxis movement.
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Pages:237-241
How to cite this article:
Ramachandra Naik Meghashree, Kakanahalli Nagaraj "Negative geotaxis in <em>Drosophila </em>species<em> </em>during priming and challenge infections of <em>E. coli</em> and <em>S. aureus</em> ". International Journal of Entomology Research, Vol 6, Issue 4, 2021, Pages 237-241
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