Circadian control of postmating behaviors in Drosophila females

RIVA, SC; SORIA MERCIER, L; RISAU GUSMAN, S; FRANCO, D.L

Carlos Paz

Congreso; XXXIV Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience; 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Rest-activity cycles are common to both males and females of Drosophila melanogaster.However, there are some important sex differences related to the timing of the resting period during daylight hours. Usually,circadian studies focus on males, and thus temporal organization of female locomotor activity has received much less attention. One of its interesting aspects is that it undergoes important changes after the female has mated. Furthermore, the traits that appear (such as egg-laying) also seem to be controlled by the clock. We are interested in studying how the circadian clock integrates information from both environmental cues and internal (mated) status in order to control post-mating behaviors such as the daytime sleep and oviposition. Recently, it was shown that the activity of a group of clock neurons called DN1s is sexually dimorphic and has a major effect on the sleep?wake profile in males and females. Given the implications for the circadian network of a functional DN1, we inquired whether affecting the molecular clock, particularly in these neurons, alters female post-mating behaviors. We downregulated clock genes exclusively in DN1p neurons. We tracked fly motor activity and studied oviposition at the level of single individuals, using devices built and vallidated in our lab. We have found that functional clock in DN1 is neccesary to control daytime sleep but not rhtymic oviposition.