Behavioral evidence for geomagnetic imprinting and transgenerational inheritance in fruit flies.

ABSTRACT: Certain long-distance migratory animals, such as salmon and sea turtles, are thought to imprint on the magnetic field of their natal area and to use this information to help them return as adults. Despite a growing body of indirect support for such imprinting, direct experimental evidence thereof remains elusive. Here, using the fruit fly as a magnetoreceptive model organism, we demonstrate that exposure to a specific geographic magnetic field during a critical period of early development affected responses to a matching magnetic field gradient later in life. Specifically, hungry flies that had imprinted on a specific magnetic field from 1 of 3 widely separated geographic locations responded to the imprinted field, but not other magnetic fields, by moving downward, a geotactic behavior ass

SUBMITTER: Oh IT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6969531 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature