Mutations and Natural Genetic Variation in the Courtship Song of Drosophila

Abstract

All Drosophila species have a courtship repertoire by which a male stimulates a female to mate with him. In many species, males vibrate their wings to produce courtship song, an element of courtship that plays an important role in female choice. Each species has a unique courtship song, with the major differences among species songs being in timing and/or structure. Analysis of genetic mutations has revealed 17 genes that affect courtship song in Drosophila melanogaster. Most of the genes were first identified as affecting another trait and were subsequently shown to affect song. Quantitative genetic studies have demonstrated a polygenetic additive genetic architecture for many song traits. Few candidate genes, identified through the classical genetic approach, coincide with the regions implicated as affecting natural variation. With many new tools in genetic analysis and the multiple Drosophila genome projects currently underway, the ability to relate mutational and quantitative analyses will improve.

The genetic architecture of sexually selected traits in two natural populations of Drosophila montana

“…One possible explanation for the disparity between the studies is that large-effect alleles that differ between clades are not making a major contribution to genetic variation within populations. This supports recent studies suggesting that the genetic architecture of intra-population and inter-clade variation may differ for Drosophila song (Gleason, 2005;Arbuthnott, 2009) and for sexually selected traits generally (Chenoweth and McGuigan, 2010). Similarly, some between-population QTL may be due to Coloradospecific alleles of large effect, which were not sampled in this study.…”

Investigating Natural Variation inDrosophilaCourtship Song by the Evolve and Resequence Approach

“…We divergently selected male D. melanogaster for a model behavior of evolutionary interest: the interpulse interval (IPI) of the male courtship "song" (Figure 1). When male D. melanogaster court females, they produce an auditory signal with their wings that, together with pheromonal information, is believed to be one of the primary modes of information exchange between the sexes (Shorey 1962;Bennet-Clark and Ewing 1969;Spieth 1974;von Schilcher 1976;Gleason 2005). The primary auditory signal, the pulse song, consists of a series of song pulses and is sometimes preceded by a sine song.…”

Two distinct genomic regions, harbouring the period and fruitless genes, affect male courtship song in Drosophila montana

“…We developed new markers for polymorphisms segregating between the two D. montana populations in 10 candidate genes for song characters, from the list provided by Gleason (2005): black (bla), cacophony (cac), cystein string protein (csp), ebony (ebo), fruitless (fru), maleless (mle), paralytic (par), period (per), slowpoke (slo) and temperature-induced paralytic E (tip). These candidate genes were selected because they have been found to affect male courtship song in D. melanogaster and we were able to use genome sequence data from D. melanogaster and D. virilis to design primers that amplified part of the target locus from D. montana.…”

“…Targeted mutation of known genes in D. melanogaster (subgenus Sophophora) has provided candidate genes for the evaluation of mapped QTL in fly species other than D. melanogaster. Many mutations are known to alter the pattern of male courtship song in D. melanogaster (Gleason, 2005).…”