Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Flies’ colour preferences depend on the time of day

Behavioural and genetic experiments have revealed that fruit flies prefer green light over other colours in the morning and evening, and always avoid blue. These colour preferences rely on different mechanisms.
  1. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster

    1. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster is in the Department of Neurobiology and Genetics, Theodor Boveri Institute, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Colour vision helps animals to find nutritious food, to avoid poisonous animals and, in some cases, in social interactions1. Colour can affect people’s mood, and their colour preferences might reflect current emotional and physiological states2. Colour preferences also seem to vary through the seasons3. Writing in Nature, Lazopulo et al.4 show that the fruit fly Drosophila avoids blue light, and prefers green light to red light at different times of the daily 24-hour cycle. The authors also pinpoint separate mechanisms for these behavioural responses.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Nature 574, 43-44 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02745-8

References

  1. Osorio, D. & Vorobyev, M. Vision Res. 48, 2042–2051 (2008).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Whitfield, T. W. & Wiltshire, T. J. Genet. Soc. Gen. Psychol. Monogr. 116, 385–411 (1990).

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Schloss, K. B., Nelson, R., Parker, L., Heck, I. A. & Palmer, S. E. Cogn. Sci. 41, 1589–1612 (2017).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lazopulo, S., Lazopulo, A., Baker, J. D. & Syed, S. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1571-y (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Yamaguchi, S., Desplan, C. & Heisenberg, M. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107, 5634–5639 (2010).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Baik, L. S., Recinos, Y., Chevez, J. A., Au, D. D. & Holmes, T. C. J. Biol. Rhythms 34, 391–400 (2019).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Wells, D. L., McDonald, C. L. & Ringland, J. E. J. Comp. Psychol. 122, 213–219 (2008).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hamblen-Coyle, M. J., Wheeler, D. A., Rutila, J. E., Rosbash, M. & Hall, J. C. J. Insect Behav. 5, 417–446 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Salcedo, E. et al. J. Neurosci. 19, 10716–10726 (1999).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kielbassa, C., Roza, L. & Epe, B. Carcinogenesis 18, 811–816 (1997).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Alejevski, F. et al. Nature Commun. 10, 252 (2019).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Konopka, R. J. & Benzer, S. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 68, 2112–2116 (1971).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Ni, J. D., Baik, L. S., Holmes, T. C. & Montell, C. Nature 545, 340–344 (2017).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Senthilan, P. R., Grebler, R., Reinhard, N., Rieger, D. & Helfrich-Förster, C. Biology 8, 6 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Xiang, Y. et al. Nature 468, 921–926 (2010).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Heisenberg, M. & Buchner, E. J. Comp. Physiol. 117, 127–162 (1977).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Gao, S. et al. Neuron 60, 328–342 (2008).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Senthilan, P. R. & Helfrich-Förster, C. PeerJ 4, e2427 (2016).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links