| Title: | Sexual response of male Drosophila to honey bee queen mandibular pheromone: implications for genetic studies of social insects |
| Author(s): | Croft JR; Liu T; Camiletti AL; Simon AF; Thompson GJ; |
| Address: | "Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada. Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada. graham.thompson@uwo.ca" |
| Journal Title: | J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00359-017-1147-y |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1432-1351 (Electronic) 0340-7594 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Honey bees secrete a queen mandibular pheromone that renders workers reproductively altruistic and drones sexually attentive. This sex-specific function of QMP may have evolved from a sexually dimorphic signaling mechanism derived from pre-social ancestors. If so, there is potential for pre-social insects to respond to QMP, and in a manner that is comparable to its normal effect on workers and drones. Remarkably, QMP applied to female Drosophila does induce worker-like qualities [Camiletti et al. (Entomol Exp Appl 147:262, 2013)], and we here extend this comparison to examine the effects of bee pheromone on male fruit flies. We find that male Drosophila melanogaster consistently orient towards a source of queen pheromone in a T-maze, suggesting a recruitment response comparable to the pheromone's normal effect on drones. Moreover, exposure to QMP renders male flies more sexually attentive; they display intensified pre-copulatory behavior towards conspecific females. We can inhibit this sexual effect through a loss-of-olfactory-function mutation, which suggests that the pheromone-responsive behavioral mechanism is olfactory-driven. These pheromone-induced changes to male Drosophila behavior suggest that aspects of sexual signaling are conserved between these two distantly related taxa. Our results highlight a role for Drosophila as a genetically tractable pre-social model for studies of social insect biology" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Bees/*genetics Drosophila melanogaster/*genetics Female Male Maze Learning/drug effects/physiology Pheromones/administration & dosage/*genetics Sexual Behavior, Animal/drug effects/*physiology Smell/drug effects/*genetics Social Behavior Species S;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineCroft, Justin R Liu, Tom Camiletti, Alison L Simon, Anne F Thompson, Graham J eng Germany 2017/02/06 J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2017 Feb; 203(2):143-149. doi: 10.1007/s00359-017-1147-y. Epub 2017 Feb 1" |
