DOI: 10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp55
title: Individual flight headings for Drosophila melanogaster in response to different wavelengths of light

description: Celestial orientation and navigation are performed by many
 organisms in contexts as diverse as migration, nest finding and
 straight-line orientation. The vinegar fly, Drosophila
 melanogaster, performs menotaxis in response to celestial cues
 during tethered flight and can disperse more than 10 kmunder
 field conditions. However, we still do not understand how spectral
 components of celestial cues and pauses in flight impact heading
 direction in flies. To assess individual heading, we began by
 testing flies in a rotating tether arena using a single green LED
 as a stimulus. We found that flies robustly perform menotaxis and
 fly straight for at least 20 min. Flies maintain their preferred
 heading directions after experiencing a period of darkness or
 stopping flight, even up to 2 h, but reset their heading when
 the LED changes position, suggesting that flies do not treat this
 stimulus as the sun. Next, we assessed the flies’ responses to a
 UV spot alone or a paired UV–green stimulus – two dots situated
 180 deg apart to simulate the solar and antisolar hemispheres. We
 found that flies respond to UV much as they do to green light;
 however, when the stimuli are paired, flies adjust for sudden 90
 deg movements, performing sun orientation. Lastly, we found no
 evidence of a time-compensated sun compass when we moved the
 paired stimuli at 15 deg h−1 for 6 h. This study demonstrates
 that wavelength influences how flies respond to visual cues
 during flight, shaping the interpretation of visual information
 to execute an appropriate behavioral response.
description: # Individual flight headings for Drosophila melanogaster in response to
 different wavelengths of light
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp55](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp55) ## Description of the data and file structure Flies' heading data is collected in a rotating tether arena, in which the fly is place between two magnets with minimum friction where the fly can rotate freely around its vertical axis. A visual cue is presented from the LED strip in the arena, and a camera below takes in images of the fly's heading in the flight arena. The images are processed and the fly's heading is recorded during the experiment. ### Files and variables #### File: all\_flies\_headings.zip **Description:** Files are stored in comma-separated value file (.csv) format. Folders are organized by each corresponding figure in Pae, Liao et al., 2024. Subfolders contain the individual heading data of flies for each subfigure. For example, fig1 folder contains two subfolders, fig1BC, and fig1D where each subfolder contains all the individual fly heading data. Each csv file is named as ' fly number + 'angle_data_magnotether'+ computer time'. If flights are separated by a rest period, the first flight period ends with an A at the end of the csv file name and the second flight period ends with a B. For figure 5 and 9 experiments where flies experienced multiple flight periods, flight 3 and 4 end with C and D, respectively. All csv files contain the following columns mentioned below: ``` 'Image Time': Computer time when each data frame was collected. 'Frame': Frame number of the data. 'Heading Angle': The heading angle of the fly in the flight arena in degrees. The range is set as 180 to -180 degrees. 'Sun Position': This number indicates both the LED position and wavelength. 0 indicates darkness, when no LED was turned on. LED numbers 1-143 indicate a green LED, and numbers between 144-203 indicate a UV LED. 'Sun Time': Indicates computer time when a change in LED position occurred. Depending on the experiment this could indicate when an LED turned on or when the LED position changed. ``` *Note: csv files in figures 6, 8, 9 where green-UV paired stimuli were presented, 'Sun Position' was divided to two columns where 'Sun Postion1' would indicate a green LED and 'Sun Position 2' would indicate a UV LED. If only one LED was used during the second 5 minute flight, the LED number would be stated in 'Sun Position1' and 'Sun Position2' be 0 (only in the case for figure 6 data). ## Code/software The python codes required to analyze this dataset and produce plots from each figure are available on GitHub through the following link: [https://github.com/GiraldoLab/JEB_2024](https://github.com/GiraldoLab/JEB_2024) circstats.py is required to run all the data analysis code which can be found here: [https://github.com/jhamrick/python-snippets/blob/master/snippets/circstats.py](https://github.com/jhamrick/python-snippets/blob/master/snippets/circstats.py) circstats.py needs to run before running any data analysis code.