The Neurobiology of Drosophila Mating Behaviours
Date:
Friday, May 11, 2018 10:30 - 11:30
Speaker:
Barry Dickson (Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute)
Location:
Mondi Seminar Room 2, Central Building
Series:
Life Sciences Seminar
Host:
Maximilian Jösch
Contact:
SIX Rita
Mating in most animal species involves complex rituals in which males and females perform distinct behaviours. These behaviours are presumed to reflect the activity of neural circuits that are at least in part sexually dimorphic and genetically programmed. In Drosophila, these circuits are shaped by the fruitless (fru) and doublesex (dsx) genes, which together are expressed in ~2000 individual neurons comprising ~200 distinct cell types. I will present work that examines how these fru- and dsx-expressing neurons are organized into sexually dimorphic circuits, and how these circuits function during the flys mating behaviours.