Title: Neural network and genetic basis of acoustic communication behaviors in Drosophila

Abstract: Animals use sounds to communicate in a wide range of contexts. In turn, auditory systems must encode relevant sound features to drive appropriate reactions. However, how auditory feature detection emerges in neural networks has been difficult to solve due to challenges in mapping the underlying circuits and recording responses to behaviorally relevant features. I recently used Drosophila melanogaster to overcome these limitations by identifying and functionally characterizing over 20 new auditory cell types, and mapping connectivity among all known auditory neurons. This connectome represents the first synaptic-level auditory map in any system. Auditory neurons with different preferences for the two types of fly courtship songs were highly interconnected, suggesting that interactions between neurons encoding different sound properties play important roles in auditory processing. In a parallel study, I leveraged the diversity of acoustic communication behaviors across fruit fly species to begin understanding the mechanisms underlying acoustic duetting. In most fly species, only males produce courtship songs, but in a few species, females sing back to males during duets. I used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to show that a gene involved in specifying male-specific courtship behaviors in insects plays a different functional role in a duetting species. These investigations lay the groundwork for uncovering the neural mechanisms enabling recognition of diverse sound patterns.

Host: Sharonda LeBlanc