Abstract
Olfactory learning and memory processes in Drosophila have been well investigated with aversive conditioning, but appetitive conditioning has rarely been documented. Here, we report for the first time individual olfactory conditioning of proboscis activity in restrained Drosophila melanogaster. The protocol was adapted from those developed for proboscis extension conditioning in the honeybee Apis mellifera. After establishing a scale of small proboscis movements necessary to characterize responses to olfactory stimulation, we applied Pavlovian conditioning, with five trials consisting of paired presentation of a banana odour and a sucrose reward. Drosophila showed conditioned proboscis activity to the odour, with a twofold increase of percentage of responses after the first trial. No change occurred in flies experiencing unpaired presentations of the stimuli, confirming an associative basis for this form of olfactory learning. The adenylyl cyclase mutant rutabaga did not exhibit learning in this paradigm. This protocol generated at least a short-term memory of 15 min, but no significant associative memory was detected at 1 h. We also showed that learning performance was dependent on food motivation, by comparing flies subjected to different starvation regimes.
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Abbreviations
- CS:
-
Conditioned stimulus
- US:
-
Unconditioned stimulus
- CR:
-
Conditioned response
- UR:
-
Unconditioned response
- WT:
-
Wild-type
- SOG:
-
Suboesophageal ganglion
- N:
-
No movement
- T:
-
Labellum trembling
- PL:
-
Palp trembling and/or slight extension of the labellum
- E1:
-
Extension of the labellum
- E2:
-
Extension of the labellum and the haustellum
- E3:
-
Complete extension
- Ns:
-
Samples size
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Acknowledgments
This work was started at the “Laboratoire de Neurobiologie Comparée des Invertébrés”, INRA and completed at the laboratory “Développement, Évolution et Plasticité du Système Nerveux”, CNRS. The authors thank Philippe Vernier for his scientific support to the project, David Laloi, Jean-Christophe Sandoz and Isabelle Bonod for sharing their experience and ideas with the conditioned proboscis activity protocol, Michel Chaminade, Jean-Yves Tiercelin and Pascal Abbas for installation, adaptation and maintenance of the system, Tazu Aoki and Guillaume Isabel for fruitful discussion and Niki Scaplehorn for linguistic advice. This study was supported in part by the “Agence Nationale pour la Recherche” and “the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller”, and Marie-Ange Chabaud was supported by the “Ecole Doctorale Sociétés et Vivant”, option “Biologie du Comportement”, at the University Paris 13.
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Chabaud, MA., Devaud, JM., Pham-Delègue, MH. et al. Olfactory conditioning of proboscis activity in Drosophila melanogaster . J Comp Physiol A 192, 1335–1348 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-006-0160-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-006-0160-3