Abstract
Recent studies under semi-natural conditions have revealed various unique features of activity/rest rhythms in Drosophilids that differ from those under standard laboratory conditions. An additional afternoon peak (A-peak) has been reported for Drosophila melanogaster and another species D. malerkotliana while D. ananassae exhibited mostly unimodal diurnal activity. To tease apart the role of light and temperature in mediating these species-specific behaviours of four Drosophilid species D. melanogaster, D. malerkotliana, D. ananassae, and Zaprionus indianus we simulated gradual natural light and/or temperature cycles conditions in laboratory. The pattern observed under semi-natural conditions could be reproduced in the laboratory for all the species under a variety of simulated conditions. D. melanogaster and D. malerkotliana showed similar patterns where as D. ananassae consistently exhibited predominant morning activity under almost all regimes. Z. indianus showed clearly rhythmic activity mostly when temperature cycles were provided. We find that gradually changing light intensities reaching a sufficiently high peak value can elicit A-peak in D. melanogaster, D. malerkotliana, and D. ananassae even at mild ambient temperature. Furthermore, we show that high mid-day temperature could induce A-peak in all species even under constant light conditions suggesting that this A-peak is likely to be a stress response.
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Acknowledgments
We thank two anonymous reviewers for critical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We thank Sudeshna Das and Vinod Ilangovan for the collection of flies, Avani Mital and Pawas Singh for help in execution of some of the experiments. We thank Vijay Kumar Sharma and Sheetal Potdar for suggestions and Rajanna and Muniraju for technical assistance. This work was supported by funding from JNCASR, Ramanujan Fellowship (Department of Science and Technology, India) to VS and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India) fellowship to PMP.
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Prabhakaran, P.M., Sheeba, V. Simulating natural light and temperature cycles in the laboratory reveals differential effects on activity/rest rhythm of four Drosophilids. J Comp Physiol A 200, 849–862 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0927-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-014-0927-x