Female Drosophila melanogaster respond to song-amplitude modulations

Birgit Brüggemeier; Mason A Porter; Jim O Vigoreaux; Stephen F Goodwin

doi:10.1242/bio.032003

Female Drosophila melanogaster respond to song-amplitude modulations

Biol Open. 2018 Jun 11;7(6):bio032003. doi: 10.1242/bio.032003.

Authors

Birgit Brüggemeier^{1

2}, Mason A Porter^{3

4

5}, Jim O Vigoreaux⁶, Stephen F Goodwin⁷

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3SR, UK birgit@brueggemeier.net.
² AudioLabs, Fraunhofer-Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen, 91058 Erlangen, Germany.
³ Department of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
⁴ Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK.
⁵ CABDyN Complexity Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1HP, UK.
⁶ Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA.
⁷ Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3SR, UK.

Abstract

Males in numerous animal species use mating songs to attract females and intimidate competitors. We demonstrate that modulations in song amplitude are behaviourally relevant in the fruit fly Drosophila We show that Drosophilamelanogaster females prefer amplitude modulations that are typical of melanogaster song over other modulations, which suggests that amplitude modulations are processed auditorily by D. melanogaster Our work demonstrates that receivers can decode messages in amplitude modulations, complementing the recent finding that male flies actively control song amplitude. To describe amplitude modulations, we propose the concept of song amplitude structure (SAS) and discuss similarities and differences to amplitude modulation with distance (AMD).This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.

Keywords: Communication signals; Courtship; Drosophila; Fruit flies; Song amplitude structure.

Grants and funding

WT_/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom