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The Animals

Drosophila melanogaster flies of the wildtype strain "Berlin" were used throughout the experiments. The flies were treated according to a breeding regime developed by Reinhard Wolf (pers. comm.): in order to control larval density, flies oviposit over night on semolina pudding (Aurora Hartweizen-Grieß). Using a needle, larvae and eggs are collected the next day and transferred to a vial containing standard cornmeal-molasses medium, keeping the larval density at 6-9 larvae/ml medium. The vials are stored in an environmental room at 25°C and 60% humidity with an artificial 16hr light/8hr dark cycle. Newly eclosed flies are transferred to fresh vials on a daily basis and kept in the environmental room. Vials from which flies have eclosed for more than two days were discarded.

24-48h old female flies were immobilized by cold-anesthesia and glued with head and thorax to a triangle-shaped silver wire (diameter 0.05mm) the day before the experiment (Fig. 5). The animals were kept individually at 25°C and 60% humidity with a 16hr light/8hr dark regime in small vials and fed a saccharose-solution until the experiment.

Figure 5Fig. 5: The flies are attached to the hook of silver wire with a UV-sensitive light in a matter of seconds. The flies are little impeded by the wire; they can stand, walk, and fly with it. (From: Heisenberg and Wolf, 1984)

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