Fig. 1: Sexually ambiguous pheromones do not preclude courtship in the dark.
From: A modular circuit coordinates the diversification of courtship strategies
a, Phylogeny of 99 Drosophila species for which cuticular pheromones have been characterized (left) and primary sex pheromones of select species (right)3,11. 7-T, 7-tricosene; cVA, cis-vaccenyl acetate; 5,25-HTCD, 5,25-hentriacontadiene61; 7,11-ND, 7,11-nonacosadiene; 9-T, 9-tricosene (M. Khallaf, personal communication); 9,23-TTCD, 9,23-tritriacosadiene. b, Courtship as captured by the inter-fly distance (IFD) between a D. melanogaster (mel), D. erecta (ere), D. simulans (sim), D. yakuba (yak), D. eugracilis (eug) or D. ananassae (ana) male with a conspecific female in the dark. Left, IFD traces over time for a single representative pair as courtship proceeds. Middle, heatmaps for 12 pairs, aligned to courtship initiation for all species except D. eugracilis, for which videos were aligned to the time of first interaction. Red, dotted lines indicate the time of first interaction (D. eugracilis) or courtship initiation (all other species). Right, histograms of time as a function of IFD for the same 12 courting pairs. c, Average courtship bout length in the dark following courtship initiation for males paired with a conspecific female (mel/sim/yak n = 20; ere/eug/ana n = 12), D. yakuba males paired with a D. simulans female (n = 15) or D. simulans males paired with a D. yakuba female (n = 15). d, Left, average courtship bout length following courtship initiation for D. yakuba males paired with oe− females mock perfumed (grey) or perfumed with the D. yakuba pheromone 7-T (black) in the dark (n = 10) and (right) histograms (as in b). Data points represent individual males; bars are median. Statistics: Kruskal–Wallis test (c) or unpaired Mann–Whitney (d). Letters denote statistically different groups (P < 0.05). ****P < 0.0001. Diagram in a adapted from ref. 3, Springer Nature Limited.
