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Protocol for quantifying sound-sensing ability of Drosophila melanogaster

Nature Protocols volume 5, pages 26–30 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Hearing is an important sensory modality for most animals to detect sound signals as they mate, look for food or fend off prey. Despite its critical role in numerous innate behaviors, relatively little is known about how the sensory information regarding the movement of air particles is detected, processed and integrated in the brain. Drosophila melanogaster, with a rather simple nervous system and the large variety of molecular and genetic tools available for its study, is an ideal model organism for dissecting the mechanisms underlying sound sensing. Here we describe assays to measure sound responses of flies behaviorally. Although this method was originally developed for mutant screening, it can also be combined with recent genetic techniques to analyze functions of the identified neural circuits by silencing or activating select sets of neurons. This assay requires ∼15 min for an experiment and 1.5 h for subsequent analyses.

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Figure 1: Setup of sound sensing assay.
Figure 2: Sound-sensing behavior of wild-type flies with intact and distal antennal segments–ablated antennae.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D.F. Eberl for original courtship song data. This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (to A.K.) and the Human Frontier Science Program Organization, BIRD/Japan Science and Technology Agency and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (to K.I.).

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Author notes

  1. Hidehiko K Inagaki

    Present address: Present address: Division of Biology 216-76, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, University of Tokyo, Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.,

    Hidehiko K Inagaki, Azusa Kamikouchi & Kei Ito

  2. School of Life Sciences, Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Horinouchi, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan.,

    Azusa Kamikouchi

Authors
  1. Hidehiko K Inagaki
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  2. Azusa Kamikouchi
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  3. Kei Ito
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Contributions

H.K.I., A.K. and K.I. designed experiments; H.K.I. performed experiments; H.K.I., A.K. and K.I. wrote the paper; and K.I. supervised the work. All authors discussed the concepts and results, and commented on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kei Ito.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Audio 1

Synthesized courtship song for stimulating male chaining behaviour (WAV; 9.2 MB). The original data are kindly provided by Dr. D.F. Eberl13. Note that the synthesized courtship song starts after 5-min of silent period. The sound intensity is constant; the volume of the sound amplifier should be turned up every 30 sec to increase loudness during experiment (See EQUIPMENT SETUP).

Supplementary Fig. 1

Drawing of the acoustic behaviour chamber (scale 1/1).

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Inagaki, H., Kamikouchi, A. & Ito, K. Protocol for quantifying sound-sensing ability of Drosophila melanogaster. Nat Protoc 5, 26–30 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2009.206

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