The courtship master gene fruitless tunes functional flexibility of courtship circuitry during development instead of switching on its function as conventionally viewed.
Male-type aggressive and courtship behaviors of the fruit flies are differentially specified by two sex-determining genes, providing a substrate for the evolution to sculpt these two behaviors independently.
Sex-specific characteristics of the fruit fly courtship behavior are not specified by a single binary switch, but as a combination of traits that are modularly specified by separable genetic switches.
The balance between sleep and sex drives determines whether male flies sleep or court, and a subset of octopaminergic neurons interact with the Fruitless-expressing courtship circuit to suppress sleep for sustained courtship.
FIB-SEM is used to identify comprehensively and reconstruct 192 neurons and their complete connectome for glomerulus VA1v of the Drosophila antennal lobe, in particular to reconstruct its local interneurons.
A sexually dimorphic circuit node controls a persistent, internal state that promotes fighting and mating in Drosophila, revealing parallels with mammalian systems suggestive of a conserved circuit "motif" controlling social behaviors.
Functional dissection of a cluster of male-specific neurons in Drosophila reveals a neuronal circuit regulating male courtship in accordance with the internal drive state.
A set of sexually dimorphic neurons in female flies is part of a recurrent neural network and drives minutes-long persistent neural activity and persistent social behaviors.
