Abstract
Naive males court both virgin and mated females but learn through experience to discriminate between them, thus minimizing futile investments in nonreceptive female flies. In the laboratory, we can exploit the innate courtship enthusiasm of males and manipulate their behavior by placing them with a nonreceptive female (immature virgin females, decapitated mature virgin females, or mature mated females), termed as the courtship suppression/conditioning assay. Early studies showed that male flies that experience failure to mate upon interaction with nonreceptive previously mated females show decreased motivation to court (courtship suppression). Courtship suppression is an important experimental paradigm for studying genes and neuronal circuits that mediate short- and long-term memory. The anti-aphrodisiac male-specific pheromone 11-cis-vaccenyl-acetate plays a key role in this conditioned response, as male flies learn to associate its presence on mated females with the failure to mate.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 459-466 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Cold Spring Harbor Protocols |
Volume | 2023 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 5 Jul 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
Funding
We thank Laurie Cazale-Debat, Shaleen Glasgow, and Saloni Rose for providing schematics and Assa Bentzur and Julia Ryvkin for insightful comments on this text. Work in our laboratory was supported by the Lundbeckfonden under grant number DANDRITE R248-2016-2518 to A.C.v.P., the Israel Science Foundation grant 174/19 to G.S.-O., and BBSRC (BB/S009299/1), Wellcome Trust (214062/ Z/18/Z), and Royal Society Research (RGS\R2\180272) grants to C.R.
Funders | Funder number |
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Royal Society Research | RGS\R2\180272 |
Wellcome Trust | 214062/ Z/18/Z |
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | BB/S009299/1 |
Lundbeck Foundation | DANDRITE R248-2016-2518 |
Israel Science Foundation | 174/19 |