Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 9, 2026
Drosophila Passive Avoidance Behavior as a New Paradigm to Study Associative Aversive Learning
Published on: October 15, 2021
Effects of inbreeding on aversive learning in Drosophila
V Nepoux1, C R Haag, T J Kawecki
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Inbreeding adversely affects life history traits as well as various other fitness-related traits, but its effect on cognitive traits remains largely unexplored, despite their importance to fitness of many animals under natural conditions. We studied the effects of inbreeding on aversive learning (avoidance of an odour previously associated with mechanical shock) in multiple inbred lines of Drosophila melanogaster derived from a natural population through up to 12 generations of sib mating. Whereas the strongly inbred lines after 12 generations of inbreeding (0.75
