For female flies, mating requires the right musical background

A new study plots the neural circuitry that makes a female fly receptive to an advancement in mating.

The female fruit fly has exacting standards for her sexual partners – it will only signal that she is ready to breed once a male fly has serenaded her with the right courtship song.

Now, new research by scientists at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus identifies the neural pathway that controls the receptivity of female flies to mating. Led by researchers Kaiyu Wang and Fei Wang, in the laboratory of group leader Barry Dickson, the team traced the path that directs the fly’s vaginal plates to open, a sign that it is ready to cooperate.

“We have identified almost the entire circuit,” says Kaiyu Wang.

The pathway integrates messages from two different groups of neurons: neurons that encode whether the fly has already mated and neurons that are tuned to the sound of the specific courtship song sung by the males of its species. If she has recently mated, or is courted by a different species of fly, the neurons that open her vaginal plates do not fire and the plates remain closed, the team reports Nov. 25 in their diary. Nature. But when the fly is still looking for a mate and hears the song of its species, those combined signals trigger the opening of the vaginal plates.

The next step is to understand exactly how the fly’s brain encodes the male courtship song and how it distinguishes between songs of different species.