ABOVE: A fruit fly tracked using the LEAP tool
MODIFIED FROM MURTHY AND SHAEVITZ LABS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
It takes an average of 17 minutes for a fruit fly couple to move from meeting to mating, says Talmo Pereira, a PhD student studying neuroscience in Joshua Shaevitz’s and Mala Murthy’s labs at Princeton University. The encounter is marked by “lots of complex stages, arguably more complex than human courtship,” he says. A male and a female Drosophila melanogaster first size each other up through an exchange of pheromones. If they’re compatible, the male chases the female down and woos her by “singing” with a wing that he vibrates in particular patterns to form the notes of his ballad. Then the partners dance, running and circling each other. Finally, the male attempts to copulate and the female accepts or rejects.
Pereira is studying how the courtship song and dance are represented in the ...
