Drosophila_abdominalLiftingBehaviour_Video1

This video demonstrates a previously undescribed behaviour that we can an "abdominal lift". Individual fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) show a lift and extension of the abdominal segments. While we observe this occuring spontaneously at a low frequency in our population (collected at a vineyard in Fennville, Michigan), we observe it occuring at much higher frequency in the presence of potential predators like the Zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus) as shown in this video.  Please see the manuscript by Parigi et al for more details.