Quantitative and Discrete Evolutionary Changes in the Egg-Laying Behavior of Single Drosophila Females.

ABSTRACT: How a nervous system assembles and coordinates a suite of elementary behavioral steps into a complex behavior is not well understood. While often presented as a stereotyped sequence of events, even extensively studied behaviors such as fly courtship are rarely a strict repetition of the same steps in a predetermined sequence in time. We are focusing on oviposition, the act of laying an egg, in flies of the genus Drosophila to describe the elementary behavioral steps or microbehaviors that a single female fly undertakes prior to and during egg laying. We have analyzed the hierarchy and relationships in time of these microbehaviors in three closely related Drosophila species with divergent egg-laying preferences and uncovered cryptic differences in their behavioral patterns. Us

SUBMITTER: Bracker LB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6549446 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature