Kimura Ken-ichi, Sato Chiaki, Yamamoto Kana, Yamamoto Daisuke
Laboratory of Biology, Hokkaido University of Education , Sapporo campus, Sapporo , Japan.
J Neurogenet. 2015 Mar;29(1):18-22. doi: 10.3109/01677063.2014.968278. Epub 2015 Jan 21.
During courtship, Drosophila melanogaster males usually position themselves behind the target female. To decipher the sensory cues that guide the males to the courting position, we quantitatively analyzed male locomotion traces within a circular observation chamber, at the center of which an immobilized virgin female was placed as a courtship target. Wild-type males preferentially stayed behind the female under not only daylight but also dark conditions, indicating that vision is dispensable for orientation by males. By contrast, olfaction-defective Or83b2 homozygous males often positioned themselves in front of a female to court under dark but not daylight conditions. We conclude that vision and olfaction redundantly guide the male fly to move behind the female to perform courtship actions. The visual and olfactory features that provide a male with cues for differentiating between the front and back end of a female are yet to be determined.
在求偶过程中，黑腹果蝇的雄性通常会位于目标雌性的身后。为了解析引导雄性进入求偶位置的感官线索，我们在一个圆形观察室中对雄性的运动轨迹进行了定量分析，观察室的中心放置了一只固定不动的处女雌蝇作为求偶目标。野生型雄性不仅在白天，而且在黑暗条件下都优先停留在雌性身后，这表明视觉对于雄性定位并非必需。相比之下，嗅觉缺陷的Or83b2纯合雄性在黑暗而非白天条件下求偶时，常常位于雌性前方。我们得出结论，视觉和嗅觉冗余地引导雄蝇移动到雌性身后以进行求偶行为。为雄性提供区分雌性前端和后端线索的视觉和嗅觉特征尚待确定。
