Animals exhibit behavioral repertoires that are often innate and result in stereotyped sexual and social responses to their environment. Innate behaviors do not require learning or experience and are likely to reflect the activation of developmentally programmed neural circuits. We are interested in the nature of defined neural circuits: how activation of circuits elicits specific behaviors.
It has been extremely difficult in complex organisms to study a circuit beyond the early stages of sensory processing. Drosophila melanogaster is an attractive model system to understand a circuit because flies exhibit complex behaviors that are controlled by a nervous system that is numerically five orders of magnitude simpler than that of vertebrates.
We use a combined behavioral, genetic, imaging and electrophysiological approach to determine how defined neural circuits and their activation elicit specific behaviors.
Genetic studies have elucidated how Drosophila male courtship behavior is specified and its circuit components are being dissected at a surprising speed. The circuit of female behavior on the other hand has been largely uncharacterized. We use a behavioral protocol that allows us to selectively inactivate subsets of neurons in the adult flies only. We use this behavioral approach and combine it with anatomical and functional dissection of the circuit.
Stressed Drosophila melanogaster release an aversive odorant that elicits a robust avoidance response in test flies. Our data indicate that stress odour avoidance is not common to all Drosophilids. This behavioural difference between melanogaster and some of its sister-species provides a powerful framework, amenable to genetic, developmental and anatomical dissection, to investigate how evolution has shaped distinct responses to an environmental cue.
Maria Luísa Vasconcelos, PhD
Cecilia Mezzera, PhD
Cristina Ferreira
Eliane Ochôa Arez
Márcia Aranha, PhD
Margarida Brotas
Miguel Gaspar
Sophie Dias
João Cruz