Sexual response of male Drosophila to honey bee queen mandibular pheromone: implications for genetic studies of social insects.
Honey bees secrete a queen mandibular pheromone that renders workers reproductively altruistic and drones sexually attentive. This sex-specific function of QMP may have evolved from a sexually dimorphic signaling mechanism derived from pre-social ancestors. If so, there is potential for pre-social insects to respond to QMP, and in a manner that is comparable to its normal effect on workers and drones. Remarkably, QMP applied to female Drosophila does induce worker-like qualities [Camiletti et al. (Entomol Exp Appl 147:262, 2013)], and we here extend this comparison to examine the effects of bee pheromone on male fruit flies. We find that male Drosophila melanogaster consistently orient towards a source of queen pheromone in a T-maze, suggesting a recruitment response comparable to the pheromone's normal effect on drones. Moreover, exposure to QMP renders male flies more sexually attentive; they display intensified pre-copulatory behavior towards conspecific females. We can inhibit this sexual effect through a loss-of-olfactory-function mutation, which suggests that the pheromone-responsive behavioral mechanism is olfactory-driven. These pheromone-induced changes to male Drosophila behavior suggest that aspects of sexual signaling are conserved between these two distantly related taxa. Our results highlight a role for Drosophila as a genetically tractable pre-social model for studies of social insect biology.
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
Justin R
JR
Croft
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
Tom
T
Liu
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
Alison L
AL
Camiletti
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
Anne F
AF
Simon
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada. graham.thompson@uwo.ca.
Graham J
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5340-7467
GJ
Thompson
D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000235:genetics*; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D010675:Pheromones / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000235:genetics*; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D012903:Smell / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics*; D012919:Social Behavior; D013045:Species Specificity
D010675:Pheromones
Apis mellifera; Chemical ecology; Fertility signals; Social evolution; Social pheromones