BBSRC and Wellcome Trust funded research from DPAG has moved a step closer to understanding why female Drosophila change their behaviour after mating. While virgin female Drosophila are highly sexually receptive and rapidly copulate with appropriate males, after copulation these females shift their priorities, becoming less receptive to further mating and focussing instead on feeding and producing eggs. Writing in Current Biology, Stephen Goodwin and his team show that this change in behaviour is due to the concentration of the neuromodulator octopamine. When the octopamine level in unmated virgin females was artificially increased by researchers, the files exhibited behaviour usually only seen in successfully mated females. The team also pinpointed the specific neurons affected by octopamine, which are located in the abdominal ganglion, a part of the fly's nervous system that is equivalent to the mammalian spinal cord.
Fruit flies loose that loving feeling
6 June 2014