Meeting Abstract
Insects are renowned for their extraordinary agility in flight. They are also extremely diverse in the crucial wing morphology that enables their flight. Our objective is to understand the link between wing shape and flight performance in insects. To avoid the disadvantages of invasively changing wing shape by clipping or sampling across a very large number of species, we have turned to a genetic approach. Whole organism gene knockouts are problematic in this context because the association between flight performance and wing shape change is confounded by unknown pleiotropic effects. In this study, we used RNA interference (RNAi) to modify wing shape within a single species, Drosophila melanogaster. RNAi knocks down expression of single genes in the developing wing blade only, leaving the rest of the fly unaffected. Restriction of the RNAi to the wing blade is achieved by coupling the bipartite Gal4/UAS yeast system with RNAi constructs. We present results from unorthodox wing shapes, sizes and vein arrangements. Flight performance is measured using high-speed cameras, photogrammetry and flight trajectory analysis.
