Research data · Motor function and endurance

Negative geotaxis and climbing assays

From 2021 to 2025, 305 animal research papers mentioned negative geotaxis and climbing assays in their title or abstract, ranking it 35th of the 90 tests we track.

That is 2.2 times the 136 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests grew to 1.2 times as many over the same span.

305 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test
2.2 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015
35th of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025
66% of these papers used fruit flies

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention negative geotaxis and climbing assays, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

  • Papers in a full year
  • 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
Papers by year
YearPapers
20019
20026
20037
200411
200516
200614
20079
200816
200924
201022
201117
201227
201328
201435
201529
201633
201739
201849
201947
202049
202163
202257
202349
202463
202573
2026 (part year)69

Papers that mention negative geotaxis and climbing assays fell from 63 in 2021 to 49 in 2023, then rose to 73 in 2025. Papers that PubMed indexed under the MeSH heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025. We take each paper's species from PubMed's indexing whenever it names one, so part of this dip may come from the indexing rather than from fewer studies.

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 305 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Fruit fly
201 papers 66%
Rat
60 papers 20%
Mouse
41 papers 13%
Other animals
11 papers 4%
Zebrafish
1 paper under 1%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the other species in this chart.

Strains and genetic lines

Strain names come from the MeSH terms PubMed adds when it indexes a paper. PubMed has indexed 242 of the 305 papers, so each bar is a share of those 242.

Wistar rats
28 papers 12%
Sprague-Dawley rats
14 papers 6%
C57BL mice
7 papers 3%
Knockout mice
2 papers 1%
Transgenic mice
2 papers 1%
Long-Evans rats
2 papers 1%
mdx mice
1 paper under 1%
BALB/c mice
1 paper under 1%

A paper indexed under two of these headings, such as knockout mice and a strain, counts under both.

Disease models these papers study

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention negative geotaxis and climbing assays and study that disease model, with its share of the 305 papers. The model comes from a paper's MeSH terms. For a paper PubMed has not indexed, it comes from PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, when that service finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one model.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 by disease model

Tests mentioned alongside negative geotaxis and climbing assays

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 305 papers that mention negative geotaxis and climbing assays.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention negative geotaxis and climbing assays and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026.

  1. Impact of high-fat diet on lifespan, metabolism, fecundity and behavioral senescence in Drosophila.

    Insect Biochem Mol Biol, 2021. 71 citations.

  2. Gastrodin extends the lifespan and protects against neurodegeneration in the Drosophila PINK1 model of Parkinson's disease.

    Food Funct, 2021. 62 citations.

  3. An insecticide target in mechanoreceptor neurons.

    Sci Adv, 2022. 47 citations.

  4. Activation of GPR40 attenuates neuroinflammation and improves neurological function via PAK4/CREB/KDM6B pathway in an experimental GMH rat model.

    J Neuroinflammation, 2021. 46 citations.

  5. Adverse biological effects of ingested polystyrene microplastics using Drosophila melanogaster as a model in vivo organism.

    J Toxicol Environ Health A, 2021. 44 citations.

How we counted

A count is the number of animal research papers whose title or abstract mentions one of the test's search terms. It is not a count of experiments, labs or animals.

A paper that mentions negative geotaxis and climbing assays only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 3 reviews. For 64 of the 305 papers, PubMed's indexing gave no species, so the species came from PubTator 3 finding one in the title or abstract.

The test's search terms are in the test list download. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.

More motor function and endurance tests

These motor function and endurance tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Negative geotaxis and climbing assays in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/negative-geotaxis

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_negative_geotaxis_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Negative geotaxis and climbing assays in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/negative-geotaxis},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}