Drosophilia Courtship Flashcards
What is a drosophilia courtship?
The courtship involves drosophilia chasing eachother, and tapping one another and sounds are created by extending one wing and creating fast vibrations
What is the fruitless gene is drosophilia?
This is a gene that has mutated and the males have disorganised and indiscriminate courtship so they do not copulate.
How many transcript codes in drosophilia
There are 4 transcript codes
The genes are mainly expressed in the pupa stage of their life - this is due to the fact they are turning into flies and forming into male and female self
How is the fru courtship song produced?
The fru expressing nuerons are UV light sensitive
If you shine light onto the fly it will allow fru to be expressed and an analysis of the song produced can be made
What happens if you cut of the heads of the flies?
In light fru is still activated as a song is produced
In headless females -created a good song
Why does the song change from bad to good in females when their head is cut off?
This is because of the change in fru proteins due to the missing head
Is there a releasing mechanism?
Subsets of nuerons that have particular ion channels that respond to heat - the change of behaviour can change behaviour Of the fly
How do you find out the quality of the song in drosophilia flies?
Cut off the wings of the male and have a female in the arena with him
Play back different variations of vibrations produced by female or male
See if the female will copulate with the male fly
If she does copulate it means the song has better quality
What is the neural mechanism underlying drosophilia courtship?
In the thoracic nervous system of the animal there are sex specific circulated neurons that form the central pattern generator.
This is why the head can be removed and the fly will still form vibrations
What happens to the central pattern generator if you remove the flies head?
The central pattern generator will have control of when the male/female can copulate and controls the vibrations produced.
This is why when the head is removed in females the song is similar to the male
What happens when you apply heat to the fly
The 20 p1 nuerons will detect this change in the heat and males will respond to this by courting
Are the P1 neurons of drosophilia a command system for courtship? Are they sufficient?
Yes they are sufficient as P1 triggers courtship - this is if you only trigger P1 nuerons the behaviour will occur
Are P1 nuerons of drosophilia a command system for courtship.is it necessary?
If we genetically engineer females and make them FRUm they produce the male type of the fru protein
This can cause their P1 circuit to degenerate
This means that courtship can occur but they have no P1 cluster
Is the courtship behaviour sensory filtering?
Female contact with male initiates courtship - contact chemical information - and leads to excitation of the P1 nuerons
FRUm directs the olfactory nueron to create a response to courtship
