Probing Acoustic Communication during Fly Reproductive Behaviors
- 1Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience (DANDRITE), Nordic-EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
- 2The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, The Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, the Nanotechnology Institute, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel
- 3School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
- ↵5Correspondence: galit.ophir{at}biu.ac.il; c.rezaval{at}bham.ac.uk
Abstract
During reproduction, male and female flies use wing vibration to generate different acoustic signals. Males produce a courtship song before copulation that is easily recognized by unilateral wing vibration. In copula, females produce a distinct sound pattern (copulation song) with both wings. Sexual rejection of immature virgins and aggressive encounters between males are also accompanied by sound pulses generated by wing flicks. Fly song has frequency ranges audible to the human ear and can be directly listened to after appropriate amplification. When displayed in an oscillogram, audio recordings can be mapped on wing-movement patterns and thus provide a fast and precise method to sample and quantify motor behaviors with high temporal resolution. After recording different fly sounds, their effect on behavior can be tested in playback experiments.
Footnotes
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↵4 Present address: Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
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From the Drosophila Neurobiology collection, edited by Bing Zhang, Ellie Heckscher, Alex C. Keene, and Scott Waddell.
