Scientists Used Fruit Flies To Describe How We Judge Cold And Hot

Scientists from Northwestern University have observed that how a fruit fly's brain reacts to hot and cold temperature, which has implications for understanding the way more complex human brain and how it replies to sensory stimuli.

Marco Gallio, who led the research is an assistant professor of neurobiology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences said, "The brain is a beautiful machine, and one of the new frontiers in biology is to understand how it works.""The fruit fly is a fantastic model in which to study how the brain controls behavior, and it can help us understand how sensory circuits work in humans."

Scientists have found several neural pathways that send information about temperature from the antenna and meet in three central areas in the brain.Majority of neurons react to temperature change either hot or cold instead of their accuracy.These neurons help the animals to realize abrupt temperature change.Neuron which reacts to both types of temperature hot or cold is known as third kind of neuron.This neuron helps the fly to get danger signal about temperature.

"Humans are more resilient than flies in reacting to temperature change," Gallio said, "but the principles we are finding in the fly brain—the logic and organization—likely are the same in both. Whether human or fly, the sensory systems have to solve the same problems, so they often do it in the same ways."

Gallio added some more lines, "we decided to focus on temperature as one of the most fundamental sensory modalities.""Much like in the fly antenna, the sensory neurons in our skin respond to either hot or cold temperature. The brain knows what the hand feels by simply keeping track of which cell type is active—what we call a 'labeled line' system."

During the study they utilized a photolabeling technique to discover the connections that send temperature information to the brain.They discovered that signals meet at three regions which are the Mushroom Body and the Lateral Horn and the third one isthe Posterior Lateral Protocerebrum.

Then they used vivo imaging process to find the thermosensory projection neurons activated by either hot or cold stimuli have narrow tuned and those react to both hot and cold have broadly tuned.

Gallio and his team were confused and unable to unstand about different paths of brain after researching."We found there was an elegant answer," Gallio said. "Some neurons respond to only hot, some neurons respond to only cold, and some neurons respond to both hot and cold. They all converge in the brain, where all the messages are orchestrated into a cohesive response."

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Male Fruit Flies Have Special Cells That Promote Fighting

According to biologist David Anderson "the brains of male fruit flies contain special cells that promote fighting" from the fly laboratory of California Institute of Technology.These fruit flies Known as Drosophilae.

Researchers says that the male  flies have specific cells in their brains that promote fighting and that specific cells are not present in the brains of female fruit flies.

According to David Anderson, he says "The sex-specific cells that we identified exert their effects on fighting by releasing a particular type of neuropeptide, or hormone, that has also been implicated in aggression in mammals including mouse and rat.""In addition, there are some recent papers implicating increased levels of this hormone in people with personality disorders that lead to higher levels of aggression."

Fruit fly's genes play similar roles like to those of a human being.Researchers are not sure about these genes control behaviors like aggression.Anderson says. "Our study validates using fruit flies as a model to discover new genes that may also control aggression in humans."

A neuropeptide produced by neurons called tachykinin, or Tk, linked to aggression.By controling neuropeptide produced by neurons, scientists were able to make flies less or more angry.

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Facts About the Glasswing Butterfly ""Greta oto"

Glasswing Butterfly "Greta oto":-

The glasswing butterfly "Greta oto" has clear, transparent wings and founds in Central America, ranges from Mexico to Panama.The glasswing butterfly is not common all over the world.Its Spanish name is espijitos, which means in English "little mirrors".The Glasswing butterfly gets its name because the tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass.A butterfly with transparent wings, glass wings is rare and beautiful.The most obvious fact about glasswing butterfly is that it contains transparent wings, normally with border of black, brownish and  orange.The wings are allowing light to pass through them and it has a wingspan of 5.6 to 6.1 cm.The length of a glasswing butterfly is approximately 28 to 30 mm.The butterfly belongs from Nymphalidae family and the Lepidoptera order .When the glass winged butterfly lays eggs, the caterpillar considers to be poisonous.For this reason, predators do not eat this toxic caterpillar.As an adult, glasswing butterfly drinks the nectar of certain flowers.The glasswing’s body absorbs chemicals from the nectar which make the glasswing taste unpleasant which prevent from predators to eat it.Greta oto adults also show a number of interesting behaviors, such as long migrations and lekking among males.They migrate for long distances as compared to other species of butterflies and travel 12 km in a day.

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Facts About Dragonflies

Something interesting

about dragonflies:-

Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, 300 million years ago.Nowadays dragonflies have wingspans of only two to five inches, but fossil dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.There are more than 5,000 known species of dragonflies all over the world.



In the larval stage, which can take approximately up to two years, dragonflies are connecting with water and eat anything like mosquitoes.At the end of its larval stage, the dragonfly moves out of the water, then its hard outer cover that protects his body called exoskeleton breaks open and releases the insect’s abdomen, which had been packed in like a telescope.Dragonflies have four wings to fly and they can fly straight up and down, like a helicopter.



Dragonflies catch their insect prey by holding it with their feet.The engineers have greatly inspited by the flight of dragonfly and engineers have dream to make robots that fly like dragonflies.They live up to a year.A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day.Scientists have tracked migratory dragonflies and they found that green darners from New Jersey traveled only every third day and an average of 7.5 miles per day.A dragonfly called the globe skinner has the longest migration of any insect 11,000 miles back and forth across the Indian Ocean.

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Ants Serving as Bodyguards:-

Partnerships between ants and trees are best example of mutualism in nature.The trees provide place for the ant colonies who protect the trees from pests(insects).Laurel trees are easily hurt to leaf-eating pests during dry spells, so the tree has developed a solution bodyguard ants.when trees are low on water, they boost their sugar production, more sugars support larger colonies of ants, so more ant bodyguards available to protect leaves against pests(insects).

Central American tree, the Acacia has more foolproof plan.The tree makes its sugars resist to Pseudomyrmex ants by lacing them with an enzyme to make the ants unable to digest other kinds of sugar, so ants completely dependent on the Acacia sugars and they protect the tree at all costs.

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