Absent pheromones turn flies into lusty Lotharios
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - 18:42
in Biology & Nature
When Professor Joel Levine's team genetically tweaked fruit flies so that they didn't produce certain pheromones, they triggered a sexual tsunami in their University of Toronto Mississauga laboratory. In fact, they produced bugs so irresistible that normal male fruit flies attempted to mate with pheromone-free males and even females from a different species—generally a no-no in the fruit fly dating scene.