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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Operant Conditioning Task to Measure Song Preference in Zebra Finches

Operant Conditioning Task to Measure Song Preference in Zebra Finches

Published on: December 26, 2019

Courtship behavior: Resurrecting an undead song.

Darcy B Kelley¹

¹Department of Biological Sciences and Graduate Program in Neurobiology and Behavior, Box 2432, Sherman Fairchild Center for the Life Sciences, 1212 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA.

Current Biology : CB

|July 9, 2024

Summary

The male fruit fly Drosophila yakuba lost a key courtship song element due to neuron death. This results from the sex-determining gene dsx producing a male form (dsxM) that triggers cell death, unlike in Drosophila melanogaster.

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Methods to Assay Drosophila Behavior

Methods to Assay Drosophila Behavior

Published on: March 7, 2012

Area of Science:

Evolutionary genetics
Neurobiology
Animal behavior

Background:

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster uses a complex courtship song for mating.
Courtship song production involves specific neurons in the ventral nerve cord.
The sex-determining gene doublesex (dsx) plays a crucial role in sexual differentiation in flies.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the genetic and developmental basis for the loss of an ancestral courtship song component in Drosophila yakuba.
To understand the role of the dsx gene in the ontogenetic death of neurons in D. yakuba males.

Main Methods:

Comparative genomics analysis of dsx gene in D. yakuba and D. melanogaster.
Histological examination of ventral nerve cord development in D. yakuba.
Analysis of dsx isoform function in cell culture or transgenic models.

Main Results:

Drosophila yakuba males exhibit ontogenetic death of specific courtship song effector neurons.
The D. yakuba dsx gene produces a male isoform (dsxM) with potent cell-death-promoting activity.
This dsxM activity is similar to the cell-death-promoting activity of the female isoform (dsxF) in D. melanogaster, leading to neuron loss in males.

Conclusions:

The loss of an ancestral courtship song component in D. yakuba is caused by programmed cell death of essential neurons.
The sex-determining gene dsx in D. yakuba has evolved a male-specific function that induces neuronal apoptosis.
This represents a significant evolutionary divergence in the regulation of sexual behavior and neural development between closely related fly species.