Drosophila melanogaster courtship song (VIDEO)
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The latest exploration of music in the natural world is taking place in Mala Murthy’s lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, where Murthy and her research group have used neural imaging, optogenetics, motion capture, modeling and artificial intelligence to pinpoint precisely where and how a fruit fly’s brain toggles between its standard solo (the pulsing or clicking sounds, in red) and its mating serenade (the more musical sounds, in blue). Their research appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.
In this video, Murthy explained: “That’s the real song. It’s not slowed down or sped up. It’s just so quiet that even if the fruit fly landed in your ear, you wouldn’t hear it. You need to amplify it, because fruit flies have tiny little wings, but that’s it. That’s actually what he’s singing to her.”
“It might be a surprise to discover that the fruit flies buzzing around your banana can sing, but it’s more than music, it’s communication,” said Murthy, the Karol and Marnie Marcin ’96 Professor and the director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. “It’s a conversation, with a back and forth. He sings, and she slows down, and she turns, and then he sings more. He’s constantly assessing her behavior to decide exactly how to sing. They’re exchanging information in this way. Unlike a songbird, belting out his song from his perch, he tunes everything into what she’s doing. It’s a dialogue.”
By studying how these tiny brains work, researchers hope to develop insights that will prove useful in the larger and more complex brains that are millions of times harder to study. In particular, Murthy’s team is trying to determine how the brain decides what behavior is appropriate in which context.
Similar to crickets and grasshoppers, fruit flies also use their wings to sing, but they extend and vibrate one wing at a time. For Drosophila melanogaster, only the male fruit flies sing. The females respond by moving away or slowing down to allow the male to approach. Male fruit flies can’t force mating; he has to woo her.
“He chases her and sings to her, and she chooses whether or not to slow down for him,” Murthy said. “They’ll go through this dance for 20 minutes or so, until she slows down enough to mate. He’ll sing hundreds of the ‘song bouts’ to her during their courtship.”
The simplest song bouts last only a fraction of a second, and the complex bouts can go on for several seconds.
Credit
Max Aragon, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University
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