TY - JOUR
T1 - Dynamic sensory cues shape song structure in Drosophila
AU - Coen, Philip
AU - Clemens, Jan
AU - Weinstein, Andrew J.
AU - Pacheco, Diego A.
AU - Deng, Yi
AU - Murthy, Mala
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank B. Arthur and D. Stern for assistance in establishing the song recording system; P. Andolfatto for wild-type fly strains; S. Kamal and V. Cheng for assistance with selecting and maintaining fly strains; G. Guan for technical assistance; T. Tayler for help with injections; J. Shaevitz for help with the fly tracker; R. da Silveira for early discussions on reverse correlation; and G. Laurent, C. Brody, D. Aronov, I. Fiete, M. Ryan, and the entire Murthy lab for thoughtful feedback and comments on the manuscript. Figure 1a was illustrated by K. Ris-Vicari. P.C. is funded by an HHMI International Predoctoral Fellowship and M.M. is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Human Frontiers Science Program, an NSF CAREER award, the McKnight Endowment Fund, and the Klingenstein Foundation.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - The generation of acoustic communication signals is widespread across the animal kingdom, and males of many species, including Drosophilidae, produce patterned courtship songs to increase their chance of success with a female. For some animals, song structure can vary considerably from one rendition to the next; neural noise within pattern generating circuits is widely assumed to be the primary source of such variability, and statistical models that incorporate neural noise are successful at reproducing the full variation present in natural songs. In direct contrast, here we demonstrate that much of the pattern variability in Drosophila courtship song can be explained by taking into account the dynamic sensory experience of the male. In particular, using a quantitative behavioural assay combined with computational modelling, we find that males use fast modulations in visual and self-motion signals to pattern their songs, a relationship that we show is evolutionarily conserved. Using neural circuit manipulations, we also identify the pathways involved in song patterning choices and show that females are sensitive to song features. Our data not only demonstrate that Drosophila song production is not a fixed action pattern, but establish Drosophila as a valuable new model for studies of rapid decision-making under both social and naturalistic conditions.
AB - The generation of acoustic communication signals is widespread across the animal kingdom, and males of many species, including Drosophilidae, produce patterned courtship songs to increase their chance of success with a female. For some animals, song structure can vary considerably from one rendition to the next; neural noise within pattern generating circuits is widely assumed to be the primary source of such variability, and statistical models that incorporate neural noise are successful at reproducing the full variation present in natural songs. In direct contrast, here we demonstrate that much of the pattern variability in Drosophila courtship song can be explained by taking into account the dynamic sensory experience of the male. In particular, using a quantitative behavioural assay combined with computational modelling, we find that males use fast modulations in visual and self-motion signals to pattern their songs, a relationship that we show is evolutionarily conserved. Using neural circuit manipulations, we also identify the pathways involved in song patterning choices and show that females are sensitive to song features. Our data not only demonstrate that Drosophila song production is not a fixed action pattern, but establish Drosophila as a valuable new model for studies of rapid decision-making under both social and naturalistic conditions.
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U2 - 10.1038/nature13131
DO - 10.1038/nature13131
M3 - Article
C2 - 24598544
AN - SCOPUS:84896269915
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 507
SP - 233
EP - 237
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7491
ER -