Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, is a model organism used in a wide range of biological research. Fruit flies are convenient models for many reasons, and they are often kept in highly controlled environments for study. Some environmental variables are easy to overlook, however, especially if they are not readily perceptible to humans. For example, electrical fields that are undetectable to humans can exert perceptible Coulomb forces on smaller organisms like fruit flies. This can introduce uncontrolled variation during experiments and especially those that use plastic containers, which can gain and hold electrical charges.
Philip Newland of the University of Southampton (UK) and a team of researchers have demonstrated that charges as low as 1 kV elicit significant avoidance behavior in fruit flies (Proc. R. Soc. B 282, 20151198; 2015). Flies in a Y-maze showed a strong preference for an uncharged arm over a charged arm, and static electric fields of 3 kV or higher significantly displaced the wings of stationary flies. The authors note that natural electric fields are usually only around 0.1–0.3 kV, but anthropogenic fields can exceed that range. Researchers should therefore consider electrical fields when carrying out controlled experiments with this ubiquitous animal model. GDL
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