Relax, just chill!

Abstract

Ectotherms are cold-blooded animals whose body temperature is controlled by external factors such as sunlight, hot rock, and so on. These creatures are unable to regulate their own body temperature, and their temperature varies according to their surroundings. As a result, we can conclude that temperature plays an essential role in the life cycle of ectotherms. Here, we adopt an intriguing technique for conducting research on the effects of temperature on ectotherms. "Rapid Cold Hardening" is the procedure. Rapid Cold Hardening, or RCH, is a phenotypic plasticity that permits ectotherms to rapidly acquire cold tolerance after only a few minutes of chilling. Drosophila was utilised as a model in my experiments to explore its responses to cold shock. It undergoes entire metamorphosis because it is a holometabolous insect, and insects that undergo complete metamorphosis have different life stages: egg, larval, pupa, and adult. Adults and larvae have a very different appearance. The active immature stages are referred to as larvae. For my experiments, I used the larval stage of the drosophila. The way they react to cold could reveal a lot about your fitness costs as well as the procedures that assist them prevent and recover from cold injury. This study looked at the survival and fitness metrics of adults of Drosophila melanogaster that had been cold stressed as larvae. Pre-treatment was given at 0°C for 2 hours and cold shock at various temperatures (-2°C, -5°C, 25 degrees Celsius of controls) for 1 hour. With a drop in temperature, I saw a considerable rise in mortality and development time. Pretreatment increased mortality and development time much more’re-treatment did not promote RCH response in the larval stage, contrary to predictions; instead, it had negative consequences. I believe it is primarily because to the high cost of hardening treatment at this vulnerable phase. Chilling temperatures deplete energy reserves, implying that systemic management of these reserves may be an important part of the processes that cope with environmental temperature fluctuations.