Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA 20147, USA.
Cell Rep. 2013 Nov 14;5(3):678-86. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2013.09.039. Epub 2013 Oct 31.
Many animals utilize acoustic signals-or songs-to attract mates. During courtship, Drosophila melanogaster males vibrate a wing to produce trains of pulses and extended tone, called pulse and sine song, respectively. Courtship songs in the genus Drosophila are exceedingly diverse, and different song features appear to have evolved independently of each other. How the nervous system allows such diversity to evolve is not understood. Here, we identify a wing muscle in D. melanogaster (hg1) that is uniquely male-enlarged. The hg1 motoneuron and the sexually dimorphic development of the hg1 muscle are required specifically for the sine component of the male song. In contrast, the motoneuron innervating a sexually monomorphic wing muscle, ps1, is required specifically for a feature of pulse song. Thus, individual wing motor pathways can control separate aspects of courtship song and may provide a "modular" anatomical substrate for the evolution of diverse songs.
许多动物利用声音信号（或歌曲）来吸引配偶。在求偶过程中，黑腹果蝇雄性通过振动翅膀产生脉冲串和延长音，分别称为脉冲音和正弦音歌曲。果蝇属的求偶歌曲非常多样化，不同的歌曲特征似乎是独立进化的。神经系统如何允许这种多样性进化尚不清楚。在这里，我们鉴定了黑腹果蝇中的一个翅膀肌肉（hg1），它是雄性特有的增大。hg1 运动神经元和 hg1 肌肉的性二态发育是雄性正弦音歌曲的必需条件。相比之下，支配性单态翅膀肌肉 ps1 的运动神经元则是脉冲歌曲的一个特征的必需条件。因此，单个翅膀运动通路可以控制求偶歌曲的不同方面，并为多样化歌曲的进化提供“模块化”解剖学基础。
