University of Tasmania
Browse
152733 - Natural variation at the Drosophila melanogaster.pdf (697.33 kB)

Natural variation at the Drosophila melanogaster Or22 odorant receptor locus is associated with changes in olfactory behaviour

Download (697.33 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 12:42 authored by Katherine Shaw, Dent, CI, Johnson, TK, Anderson, A, De Bruyne, M, Warr, CG

In insects, many critical olfactory behaviours are mediated by the large odorant receptor (Or) gene family, which determines the response properties of different classes of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). While ORN responses are generally conserved within and between Drosophila species, variant alleles of the D. melanogaster Or22 locus have previously been shown to alter the response profile of an ORN class called ab3A. These alleles show potential clinal variation, suggesting that selection is acting at this locus. Here, we investigated if the changes seen in ab3A responses lead to changes in olfactory-related behaviours. We show that variation at the Or22 locus and in the ab3A neurons are not fully compensated for by other ORNs and lead to overall changes in antennal odorant detection. We further show that this correlates with differences in odorant preference behaviour and with differences in oviposition site preference, with flies that have the chimaeric short allele strongly preferring to oviposit on banana. These findings indicate that variation at the Or22 locus leads to changes in olfactory-driven behaviours, and add support to the idea that the ab3A neurons are of especial importance to the ecology of Drosophila flies.

History

Publication title

Open Biology

Volume

11

Issue

9

Pagination

1-7

ISSN

2046-2441

Department/School

Tasmanian School of Medicine

Publisher

The Royal Society Publishing

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

© 2021 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences; Expanding knowledge in the health sciences

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC