Abstract
The evolution of powered flight in insects had major consequences for global biodiversity and involved the acquisition of adaptive processes allowing individuals to disperse to new ecological niches. Flies use both vision and olfactory input from their antennae to guide their flight; chemosensors on fly wings have been described, but their function remains mysterious. We studied Drosophila flight in a wind tunnel. By genetically manipulating wing chemosensors, we show that these structures play an essential role in flight performance with a sex-specific effect. Pheromonal systems are also involved in Drosophila flight guidance: transgenic expression of the pheromone production and detection gene, desat1, produced low, rapid flight that was absent in control flies. Our study suggests that the sex-specific modulation of free-flight odor tracking depends on gene expression in various fly tissues including wings and pheromonal-related tissues.
Highlights
400 millions years ago, when insects gained the ability to fly, they started to conquest the space overhanging most terrestrial environments[1]
Varied sensory cues can influence Drosophila flight: olfactory stimuli provided by food and carbon dioxide strongly attract flies during flight[18,19] as do visual cues related to motion and to polarized light[20,21]
Our data obtained with D. melanogaster transgenics suggest that wing chemosensors and desat1-expressing tissues affect precise features of odor-tracking free-flight
Summary
400 millions years ago, when insects gained the ability to fly, they started to conquest the space overhanging most terrestrial environments[1]. To lift up from the ground and navigate in space, insects need to constantly integrate the feedback of multiple sensory modalities provided by visual, chemical and mechanosensory signals[8]. Orientation to sensory cues, and specially to the chemical signals provided by food and conspecifics, requires a very sophisticated ability. Varied sensory cues can influence Drosophila flight: olfactory stimuli provided by food and carbon dioxide strongly attract flies during flight[18,19] as do visual cues related to motion and to polarized light[20,21]. The effect of visual cues can be modulated by mechanosensory stimuli[22,23] and by olfactory cues which are bilaterally perceived by flies[24,25,26]. We measured the effect of desat[1], a gene involved in several aspects of pheromonal communication, and expressed both in neural and non-neural tissues[31,32]
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