KC and the Sunshine band were prophetic when they wrote the song Get Down Tonight in ways that they never could have imagined. In the tiny social world of fruit fly courtship, the directive ‘do a little dance, make a little love’ is right on target. And just like in a dance club, what is said and when/how it is said are important to the success of fly hookups.

In ways not that dissimilar to humans, Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies meet at a singles bar commonly known as a fallen piece of overripe fruit. As the prospects congregate, there is a lot of information that is exchanged. Males use their wings to sing at short distances to the ladies milling about, giving persistent shouts of: (1) “Hey!” and (2) “How you doin’?”. When a female slows her pace to one of these calls from the dance floor, the male can then move in and cut out the ‘Hey’ portion of the call, and just use the more intimate “How you doin’?” signal. If she is still receptive, the male will dance a little closer, touching her butt and showing off his best moves until an eventual one-night-stand is awarded for his efforts. This interesting human/fruit fly parallel shows just how universal mating strategies are, even across 500 million years of evolution.

Also in similar fashion, when a miscommunication occurs, males have a much more difficult time obtaining a mate. The recent paper by Trott et al. (PLoS ONE, 2012) shows that the distance and timing of the two signals is critical to male mating success. Female fruit flies give off a chemical signal (like perfume!) to courting males, telling them that they’re interested, and the distance that the female lingers from the male is reinforcement to the male’s advances. Males who are deficient in their ability to smell due to an olfactory mutation also have a difficult time switching to a dominant “How you doin’?” signal. Without a functioning olfactory feedback mechanism, the male is unable to make the proper adjustments to his signal. For the female, it’s kind of like trying to have a one-on-one conversation with a male that is still trying to pick up every other female in the room. Even though the male is handsome/strong/free of parasites, interest from the female quickly wanes when he keeps giving the wrong signal. All the parts of the song are there; he just can’t read the cues.

So next time you’re out busting a move on the dance floor, think of the noble fruit fly passionately conducting it’s own miniature fandango. What is said is just as important as the moves that are made. And being able to read feedback is crucial to success. In a strange homage to Cyrano de Bergerac, it’s the male fruit fly that uses its ‘nose’ to speak sweet nothings that is best able to woo the female.

Trott AR, Donelson NC, Griffith LC, Ejima A (2012) Song Choice Is Modulated by Female Movement in Drosophila Males. PLoS ONE 7(9): e46025. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046025

Alexander Trott ’10 and postdocs Nathan Donelson and Aki Ejima worked on Drosophila courtship together with Prof. Leslie Griffith at Brandeis. Aki is now an Assistant Professor at Kyoto University. Alex is currently a graduate student at Harvard Medical School.

Video courtesy of Dr. Aki Ejima