| Title: | Courtship initiation is stimulated by acoustic signals in Drosophila melanogaster |
| Address: | "Department of Biology, National Center for Behavioral Genomics and Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USa. aki@brandeis.edu" |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0003246 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1932-6203 (Electronic) 1932-6203 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Finding a mating partner is a critical task for many organisms. It is in the interest of males to employ multiple sensory modalities to search for females. In Drosophila melanogaster, vision is thought to be the most important courtship stimulating cue at long distance, while chemosensory cues are used at relatively short distance. In this report, we show that when visual cues are not available, sounds produced by the female allow the male to detect her presence in a large arena. When the target female was artificially immobilized, the male spent a prolonged time searching before starting courtship. This delay in courtship initiation was completely rescued by playing either white noise or recorded fly movement sounds to the male, indicating that the acoustic and/or seismic stimulus produced by movement stimulates courtship initiation, most likely by increasing the general arousal state of the male. Mutant males expressing tetanus toxin (TNT) under the control of Gr68a-GAL4 had a defect in finding active females and a delay in courtship initiation in a large arena, but not in a small arena. Gr68a-GAL4 was found to be expressed pleiotropically not only in putative gustatory pheromone receptor neurons but also in mechanosensory neurons, suggesting that Gr68a-positive mechanosensory neurons, not gustatory neurons, provide motion detection necessary for courtship initiation. TNT/Gr68a males were capable of discriminating the copulation status and age of target females in courtship conditioning, indicating that female discrimination and formation of olfactory courtship memory are independent of the Gr68a-expressing neurons that subserve gustation and mechanosensation. This study suggests for the first time that mechanical signals generated by a female fly have a prominent effect on males' courtship in the dark and leads the way to studying how multimodal sensory information and arousal are integrated in behavioral decision making" |
| Keywords: | "*Acoustics Animals Animals, Genetically Modified Behavior, Animal Darkness Decision Making Drosophila Proteins/genetics Drosophila melanogaster/*genetics/*physiology Female Male Neurons/metabolism Pheromones Receptors, Cell Surface/genetics *Sexual Behavi;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineEjima, Aki Griffith, Leslie C eng S20RR16780/RR/NCRR NIH HHS/ R25 MH059472/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ P01 NS044232/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ R01 GM54408/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ R01 GM054408/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ P30 NS045713/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural 2008/09/20 PLoS One. 2008 Sep 19; 3(9):e3246. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003246" |
