Love Thy Neighbour? Social and Sexual Accommodation in Fruitfies

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Individuals of many species adjust to their environment to increase their potential competitiveness. A familiar example is 'speech accommodation', where individuals, often unintentionally, adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around them. In fruitflies, males show precise responses to their social and sexual environment. Following detection of conspecific rivals, males transfer more ejaculate proteins to females and sire more offspring. Males detect rivals using multiple, redundant sensory inputs. The first aim is to test the idea that this system is robust, immune to mis-firing and confers significant benefits. Our recent analysis of gene expression in males exposed to rivals reveals a signature of redundancy, with similar sensory inputs following different pathways to result in the same output. The second aim is to test directly for such genomic redundancy, by analyzing the gene expression patterns of responding males that lack sensory inputs. The final aim is to test whether the same rules apply to detection in interactions involving males of closely related species. 'Mistakes' in identification are apparently not related to relatedness or the potential to hybridise.The proposed project is at the forefront of identifying recognition mechanisms and is relevant to insect control, by using our knowledge to manipulate reproductive biology via gene silencing.