Drosophila melanogaster is a widely used model organism which for the past 20 years
has been employed in a variety of contexts to understand aspects of sleep, activity and
more complex forms of behaviour. A challenge within the field of behaviour is how
to accurately classify and quantify behaviours that arise from an organism when these
behaviours are observed in different contexts. Technological advances have increased
the availability of quantitative tools which can be used to examine activity and sleep
behaviour. With the use of these tools, we can now answer new questions about the
underlying mechanisms of behaviour in different conditions. In the thesis herein, I have
examined activity and sleep behaviour in two different contexts, utilising some of these
new technological tools, including a novel activity monitoring device and statistical
classification techniques. In the first part of this thesis, I use this activity monitoring
system to elucidate some of the mechanisms involved in homeostatic sleep behaviour.
Specifically, I examine the effect of two different sleep deprivation methods on mated
and virgin Drosophila females to examine their responses in terms of homeostatic sleep
regulation. Using the same methodology and protocol, I then extend this work to exam-
ine the role of the neuropeptide, Corazonin, and its receptor, the Corazonin receptor,
in these contexts. In the second part of this thesis, I use the same activity monitor-
ing system to record the behavioural responses of flies exposed to different insecticide
compounds. I then use both a statistical classification technique and behavioural anal-
ysis to attempt to classify these compounds based on their mode of action (MoA) and
symptomology. Finally, I apply this methodology to answer other biological questions
of interest, classifying both rebound sleep and flies with varying genotypes.