Courtship Pattern Shaped by Emergence of a New Gene in Fruit Flies

Monday, May 26, 2008 - 16:28 in Biology & Nature

When a young gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male courtship. Such behavior is widespread in many fly species, but not in Drosophila melanogaster, which has the sphinx gene. Other fly species do not. When two D. melanogaster males that lack the sphinx gene are put together, they court each other.

Read the whole article on Newswise - Scinews

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