Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Valentino Morazzo Nunzi | Email: valentinovittoriomn@gmail.com
Valentino Morazzo Nunzi 1°, Christian Carpio Romero 2°, Lia Frenkel 3°, Ramiro Freudenthal 1°
1° Laboratorio de Plasticidad Sináptica y Memoria, Instituto de Biociencias, Biotecnología y Biología traslacional (IB3), UBA-CONICET, FCEN, UBA, CABA, Argentina.
2° Laboratorio de Genética del Comportamiento, Fundación Instituto Leloir, IIBBA-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Laboratorio de neurociencias del tiempo, Instituto de Biociencias, Biotecnología y Biología traslacional (IB3), UBA-CONICET, FCEN, UBA, CABA, Argentina.
Drosophila under predation express a variety of defensive behaviors. Predation has been proposed to promote rapid learning; thus, it is valuable to utilize a natural predator as a source of unconditioned stimulus to study behavior responses, in comparison to more rigid ones such as electric shocks. Here we study the interaction between the spider Menemerus semilimbatus, a Salticid specialized predator of Diptera, and Drosophila. This spider stalks and prays flies in a direct attack to which Drosophila displays a range of defensive behaviors. Here we define and explore the long-term memory revealed as the retention of the Drosophila freezing response, its context specificity that suggest that this type of memory is associative, and the possible molecular pathways involved in processing and retaining memories.