Learning Decreases Heterospecific Courtship And Mating In Fruit Flies

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 08 Oct 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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It has been nearly 150 years since Darwin's publication of "The Origin of Species" but we still do not fully understand the mechanisms that cause animal populations to diverge into distinct species.

Fruit flies have been a leading model system in evolutionary research on speciation as well as neurogenetic work on learning and memory. Research in my lab has integrated these two disparate disciplines and revealed that male fruit flies exhibit adaptive learning in the context of sexual behaviour.

The males also learn to suppress courting females from a partially diverged population and this can increase the likelihood of speciation.

Royal Society journal Biology Letters

Biology Letters publishes short, innovative and cutting-edge research articles and opinion pieces accessible to scientists from across the biological sciences. The journal is characterised by stringent peer-review, rapid publication and broad dissemination of succinct high-quality research communications.

Biology Letters

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