Over the last few months, I’ve been looking at the effects of stress on the bodyweight and activity of Hoverflies. The flies are being exposed to stress by being permanently kept in either bright light or mechanically unstable conditions through the use of a rocker table. The flies have been being weighed twice a week (excluding the Summer break) and had their activity levels measured once a week using a Locomotive Activity Monitor. While I am yet to have enough data to have any conclusive findings, the possibility of where this research could be channelled is exciting! If I am able to make correlations between my results and similar human studies, this could add to the evidence of using Hoverflies as a model for future experiments of human stress response. If there is strong evidence pointing to Hoverflies having a high resilience to stress, then with the current state of climate change, this could add to the body of evidence for encouraging Hoverflies as alternate pollinators to bees in the future.
My name is Bernie Lagana and I am just about to start the second year of my Medical Degree at Flinders University. A component of this course is called Advanced Studies in which we are required to undertake a research project. In the nine years preceding this degree I was a freelance musician in Sydney. My experience in research and scientific methodology was quite limited. My goals for this project are to learn about scientific experimental methods, critiquing and filing research papers using EndNote and data analysis and basic coding using MatLab. Over the last few months, I’ve been looking at the effects of stress on the bodyweight and activity of Hoverflies. The flies are being exposed to stress by being permanently kept in either bright light or mechanically unstable conditions through the use of a rocker table. The flies have been being weighed twice a week (excluding the Summer break) and had their activity levels measured once a week using a Locomotive Activity Monitor. While I am yet to have enough data to have any conclusive findings, the possibility of where this research could be channelled is exciting! If I am able to make correlations between my results and similar human studies, this could add to the evidence of using Hoverflies as a model for future experiments of human stress response. If there is strong evidence pointing to Hoverflies having a high resilience to stress, then with the current state of climate change, this could add to the body of evidence for encouraging Hoverflies as alternate pollinators to bees in the future.
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Hoverfly Vision
The hoverfly vision group can be found at 2 locations: At Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and at Uppsala University in Sweden. Archives
January 2022
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