Learning and memory in Drosophila melanogaster during predation exposure, by the spider Menemerus semilimbatus

CHRISTIAN CARPIO ROMERO; LIA FRENKEL ; FREUDENTHAL, RAMIRO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; SAN 2020; 2020

SAN

Evolutionarily, predation has exerted selection pressure on the behaviors of species. Those strategies that are effective and confer survival, will persist over time. Predatory risk can affect the behavior and physiology of the potential prey, and in this way, it has been proposed that natural selection guided the development of different behavioral systems, among which it´s proposed a rapid learning system (Associative learning, eg. Pavlovian conditioning) that allows to identify threats immediately and promote pre-established defensive behaviors (Fanselow M. S., 2018.)The spiders Menemerus semilimbatus, of the family Salticidae, are specialists in Diptera. Although they are capable of feeding on other species, this spider initiates a pattern of predatory behaviors to capture flies. This makes it a good candidate to develop a naturalistic paradigm in the laboratory, which allows us to study the strategies carried out by Drosophila melanogaster.Thus we perform a new paradigm in which we faced the flies with the predator and analyze the behaviors developed during the exposure (training) and in a subsequent test, within the context without the spider. Our results show learning and short-term memory processes in Drosophila melanogaster under predatory threat.