Fruit Fly Aggression: The Effects of Creatine on Fruit Flies

Drosophila melanogaster are commonly known as fruit flies. The flies have a short life cycle and many stages within the cycle, such as egg, larvae, pupa, and adulthood. During the females short life span a female may lay hundreds of fertilized eggs, resulting in large population.

The flies have red eyes and a brownish-yellow color with transversal black rings across their bodies. Males have a distinct black patch on its abdomen distinguishing it from the female. Females are slightly longer than males and have more transversal black rings. Once eggs are fertilized 12-15 hours later they hatch at twenty five degrees Celsius. The larvae grow for about 4 days while molting twice. During this time they feed on the micro-organisms that decompose the fruit themselves, and then larvae encapsulate in the puparium and undergo a four day long metamorphosis. The fruit flies have a lightweight, but strong exterior skeleton. This multi-layered exoskeleton protects the insect from the environment and natural enemies. Insects have three body regions, a head, thorax, and abdomen. The head function mainly for food and sensory intake and information processing. The thorax provides structural supports for the legs, and for one or two pairs of wings. The abdomen functions in digestion and reproduction. The internal anatomy of insects is characterized by an open circulatory system, a 3 chambered digestive system, and a multitude of breathing tubes.

Creatine phosphate-

Creatine Monohydrate

Drosophila melanogaster

Creatine is a muscle building substance taken while working out to enhance your weight lifting workout. Creatine functions as part of a system based on arginine/phosphoarginine operates in many invertebrates. The presence of this energy keeps the level of ATP/ADP ratio high, which ensures that the free energy of ATP remains high and minimizes the loss of adenosine nucleotides, which would cause cellular dysfunction.

Our next step in our project is to add the creatine to my fruit flies food. To do this we will use a ratio of 40 grams of creatine to every bottle of food. Since we also use viles that are much smaller than the bottles the ratio for those viles are 15 grams per food container this way the flies don't just have only creatine in their food they have more food as well.