Conditioned courtship suppression in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster males reduce courtship behaviour after mating failure. In the lab, such conditioned courtship suppression, aka ‘courtship conditioning’, serves as a complex learning and memory assay. Interestingly, variations in the courtship conditioning assay can establish different types of memory. Here, we review research investigating the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow male flies to form memories of previous mating failures.

Keywords:

• Drosophila melanogaster
• courtship conditioning
• memory
• neurobiology
• molecular genetics

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Marla Sokolowski, to whom this special issue of the Journal is dedicated. Without her pioneering influence in behaviour genetics in Canada, we likely would never have been in a position to write this review about the mechanism underlying plasticity in Drosophila courtship behaviour. Thanks, Marla, for all your advice and inspiration over the years!

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by and NSERC Discovery Grant to JM Kramer, an NSERC Post Graduate Scholarship D to N Raun and a Nova Scotia Gradaute Scholarship to SG Jones.