Neural circuit evolved to process pheromone differently in two species of fruit fly

Gompel, Nicolas; Prud’homme, Benjamin

doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05595-y

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11 July 2018

Neural circuit evolved to process pheromone differently in two species of fruit fly

The males of two closely related species of fly respond differently to a female pheromone. It emerges that this difference is due to alterations in the activity of an evolutionarily conserved neural circuit in the brain.

Nicolas Gompel⁰ &
Benjamin Prud’homme¹

Nicolas Gompel
1. Nicolas Gompel is in the Faculty of Biology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, 82152 Planegg-Martinsried, Germany.
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Benjamin Prud’homme
1. Benjamin Prud’homme is at the Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille (IBDM), 13288 Marseille, France.
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Particular sensory signals — a certain odour or taste, for instance — can trigger opposing responses in different species. What changes in neural circuits could elicit such contradictory behaviours? In a paper in Nature, Seeholzer et al.¹ compare the circuits that control courtship in males in two closely related species of fruit fly that behave differently when exposed to a particular pheromone. They find an explanation for these opposing behaviours that few neuroscientists would have predicted.

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Nature 559, 485-487 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05595-y

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