Olfactory Fine-Tuning Helps Fruit Flies Find Their Mates

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Normal fruit flies (left) quickly found a female at the center of the testing arena whilst flies unable to calibrate their olfactory systems (right) wandered aimlessly. Track color depicts time beginning with violet and ending with red. Credit: Cory ...
Normal fruit flies (left) quickly found a female at the center of the testing arena, whilst flies unable to calibrate their olfactory systems (right) wandered aimlessly. Track color depicts time beginning with violet and ending with red. Credit: Cory Root/UCSD
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Fruit flies fine-tune their olfactory systems by recalibrating the sensitivity of different odor channels in response to changing concentrations of environmental cues, a new study has shown. Disable this calibration system, and flies have trouble finding a mate, the researchers found.


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