Week 1-- The enrichment process of fruit flies

Hello everyone.This is Sandra. The first week of my lab (The Evolution and Behavior Lab) in Harvard University was awesome.I am working directly with my PI Dr de Bivort,( but he likes me to call him Ben) and he is very easy going, helpful and communicative. I am lucky to have this chance to work with him.

Day 1

Ben gave me a tour around the Rowland Institute where my lab is located . He went through all the safety instructions in the lab and he introduced two machines that I would use in the following weeks: FlyVac and the Y-maze machine. The FlyVac is used to measure the phototactic personality while the Y-maze is to measure the locomotive behavior of fruit flies.  

 

Day 2

In the  morning I need to go for shopping at the Central Square in Cambridage area. Since my project is " How environmental enrichment affect the behavioral diversity of genetically identical fruit flies", Ben asked me to make an enrichment plan for the fruit flies and go to the art store in Central Square to buy all the supplies which could be used for enrichment. I bought some pipe cleaners, small poms poms, drinking strews, thin sticks of balsa wood and some small tubes that fruit flies could climb on. 

 

Day 3

 I had a practice of using the microscope to separate female fruit flies from male fruit flies, virgins from non virgins. It was really amazing. After that, Ben asked me to read the first chapter of the book called "Fly Pushing". It is useful for me to learn about the basic fly husbandry and steps for the collection of flies for crosses. After I finished the first chapter, I started making the trials for my experiment.There are same number of enrichment tubes and control tubes, and there are three females and two males in each tube. After the fruit flies in all the tubes were awake, I put them into the fridge which is in 25 degree and 60% Relative Humidity. 

 

Day 4

I learnt how to expand the fruit flies and created more trials for my experiment. At the end of the day, Ben gave me a suggestion: create two extreme conditions of environment enrichment, one is what I have been doing so far (enrichment in the tube) and other one is to use a tall big cage. I need to see how the results differ from each other.

 

Day 5 and Day 6

I was simply doing the expansion of the fruit flies and more creation of the trials because I was waiting for the more supplies for the enrichment (big cage) to be delivered.

Overall the first week is a fruitful week to me. I am looking forward to using the two machines and collecting data in the coming weeks!