This study illustrates the requirement of training and exercise in executing successful fine motor skills in the invertebrates.Fruit fly Drosophila groups reared and grown in two different fly chambers ,one allows free flight movement and other restricted flight movement were tested for various flight kinematics in free flight arena and tethered flight simulator.Overall performance of the experienced flight animals and naive previously unexperienced flight animal seems to be genetically pre-determined except the naive flies showed inefficient fine object tracking and optomotor skills.
The authors proposed two hypothesis based on their findings that support the role of experience in flight namely Neuronal and muscular exercise hypothesis.This study suggests that insects are not just pre determined flight machineries and plasticity shapes the fine motor control.Therefore the plasticity in motor skills should also be of interest for building any biologically inspired devices .
Reference:
Hesselberg, T., & Lehmann, F. (2009). The role of experience in flight behaviour of Drosophila Journal of Experimental Biology, 212 (20), 3377-3386 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.025221
Tags: Drosophila, experience, flies, learning
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