Adult fruit flies avoid activation of bitter-sensing neurons by modulating their locomotion speed.(A) Adult Drosophila expressing CsChrimson in Gr66a bitter-sensing neurons (red circles). Illustration of the identification of different body parts of a moving fly by PiVR. (B) Illustrative trajectories of flies in a virtual checkerboard pattern and the corresponding ethogram. Flies were behaving in a petri dish. (D) The ethogram reports the time spent by individual animals (rows) in the dark (white) and lit (red) squares. Panel C displays a quantification of the avoidance of virtual bitter taste through a preference index: PI=TON−TOFFTON+TOFF, where T is the time spent on the ON or OFF quadrants (Mann–Whitney U test, p < 0.001). (E) Median locomotion speeds of individual animals as a function of the exposure to light. (F) Quantification of locomotion speeds across experimental conditions (Dunn’s multiple comparisons test, different letters indicate at least p < 0.01). Statistical procedures are detailed in the Methods section. Statistical significances are indicated with lowercase letters. All data used to create this figure are available from https://doi.org/10.25349/D9ZK50. Gr66a, gustatory receptor 66a; PiVR, Raspberry Pi Virtual Reality.
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