Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?

<p><em>Drosophila</em> courtship song has been studied for over 60 years and remains an area of active research today. Several studies have investigated the physiological mechanisms for fly song production, but no unifying account exists. We review fly song production and integrate...

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Main Authors: Brüggemeier, B, Goodwin, S
Other Authors: Porter, M
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
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author Brüggemeier, B
Goodwin, S
author2 Porter, M
author_facet Porter, M
Brüggemeier, B
Goodwin, S
author_sort Brüggemeier, B
collection OXFORD
description <p><em>Drosophila</em> courtship song has been studied for over 60 years and remains an area of active research today. Several studies have investigated the physiological mechanisms for fly song production, but no unifying account exists. We review fly song production and integrate published data to a mathematical model of courtship song production.</p> <p>We hypothesize that muscle dynamics underlie fluctuations in the amplitude of courtship song. Our model suggests that these fluctuations can be measured and we introduce the term <em>'song amplitude structure'</em> (SAS) for those measurements. We predict that SAS signals muscle power and we validate our prediction in muscle mutants of the <em>Drosophila myosin light chain</em> (<em>Dmlc2</em>) gene.</p> <p>We then investigate whether SAS is a communication signal in <em>Drosophila</em>. We show that the two species <em>D. melanogaster</em> and <em>D. simulans</em> differ in their SAS and that both females and males behaviourally discriminate their species SAS from other SAS. This suggests that SAS is a communication signal in <em>Drosophila</em>.</p> <p>Perception of SAS may be affected by noise and we therefore examine the effect of noise on responses to SAS. We find that female auditory responses are not impaired by noise in SAS, however male auditory responses are impaired by noise in SAS. This suggests that males and females may be processing noise in SAS differently. Future work should investigate whether sexually dimorphic auditory neurons respond differently to noise in SAS.</p> <p>We hope that our work will be helpful for investigating fluctuations in amplitude of fly song. We also wish that researchers can use our work for studying the mechanisms underlying both the production of SAS and the perception of SAS.</p>
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spelling oxford-uuid:56624d4d-7f34-4d08-9c4c-8d35d7d1e2822022-03-26T16:49:52ZIs Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?Thesishttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_db06uuid:56624d4d-7f34-4d08-9c4c-8d35d7d1e282DrosophilaNeurosciencesEnglishORA Deposit2017Brüggemeier, BGoodwin, SPorter, M<p><em>Drosophila</em> courtship song has been studied for over 60 years and remains an area of active research today. Several studies have investigated the physiological mechanisms for fly song production, but no unifying account exists. We review fly song production and integrate published data to a mathematical model of courtship song production.</p> <p>We hypothesize that muscle dynamics underlie fluctuations in the amplitude of courtship song. Our model suggests that these fluctuations can be measured and we introduce the term <em>'song amplitude structure'</em> (SAS) for those measurements. We predict that SAS signals muscle power and we validate our prediction in muscle mutants of the <em>Drosophila myosin light chain</em> (<em>Dmlc2</em>) gene.</p> <p>We then investigate whether SAS is a communication signal in <em>Drosophila</em>. We show that the two species <em>D. melanogaster</em> and <em>D. simulans</em> differ in their SAS and that both females and males behaviourally discriminate their species SAS from other SAS. This suggests that SAS is a communication signal in <em>Drosophila</em>.</p> <p>Perception of SAS may be affected by noise and we therefore examine the effect of noise on responses to SAS. We find that female auditory responses are not impaired by noise in SAS, however male auditory responses are impaired by noise in SAS. This suggests that males and females may be processing noise in SAS differently. Future work should investigate whether sexually dimorphic auditory neurons respond differently to noise in SAS.</p> <p>We hope that our work will be helpful for investigating fluctuations in amplitude of fly song. We also wish that researchers can use our work for studying the mechanisms underlying both the production of SAS and the perception of SAS.</p>
spellingShingle Drosophila
Neurosciences
Brüggemeier, B
Goodwin, S
Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title_full Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title_fullStr Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title_full_unstemmed Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title_short Is Drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal?
title_sort is drosophila song amplitude structure a communication signal
topic Drosophila
Neurosciences
work_keys_str_mv AT bruggemeierb isdrosophilasongamplitudestructureacommunicationsignal
AT goodwins isdrosophilasongamplitudestructureacommunicationsignal