THE FORAGING GENE AFFECTS ADULT BUT NOT LARVAL OLFACTORY-RELATED BEHAVIOR IN DROSOPHILA-MELANOGASTER

This study investigates the ability of larvae and adult rover and sitt er Drosophila melanogaster to detect and migrate towards the source of a fly medium attractant using larval plate assays and an adult olfact ory trap assay. Allelic variation at the foraging locus which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG) did not affect larval olfactory response in the larval plate assays. In contrast, adult males of the s itter mutant for(s2) exhibited an olfactory trap response (OTR) which was significantly greater than that of males of the wild type for(R) s train from which for(s2) was derived and further genetic analysis show ed that this was attributable to the for(s2) allele. The olfactory res ponses of for(R) and for(s2) flies to three odours (propionic acid, et hyl acetate and acetone) in a T-maze assay was normal indicating that they did not have general olfactory deficits. The finding that adult f lies who differ in their PKG enzyme activities differ in foraging beha viours and olfactory trap responses to yeast odours suggests that PKG signalling pathways are involved in olfactory related responses to foo d. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.