A small number of cholinergic neurons mediate hyperaggression in female Drosophila
Abstract
Different intensity levels of aggression surround our daily lives, terminating in occasional individuals with violence. What nervous system mechanisms exist that set limits on such widely differing expressions of aggression? Is sex one of them? A generalization associated with aggression is that males fight at higher intensity levels than females. In a Drosophila melanogaster aggression model, it was found that males fight at higher intensity levels than females, and that hierarchical relationships are established only in male fights. However, our screen of a Drosophila library of Gal4 drivers yielded a single line that triggered exceptionally high levels of aggression selectively in female flies. Here the roots of that hyperaggression are traced to a very small set of female brain-specific neurons.
- Publication:
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- August 2019
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1907042116
- Bibcode:
- 2019PNAS..11617029P