Die erste „Verhaltenstransplantation“ der Welt zwischen Arten erreicht | Wissenschaftler haben ein Werbeverhalten von zwei Fliegenarten übertragen, was den Empfänger ausgelöst hat, um diese völlig fremde Handlung auszuführen, als wäre es seine eigene.

From the article: In a breakthrough [study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp5831), scientists have transferred a courtship behavior from one species to another, triggering the recipient to perform this completely foreign act as if it was its own. While genes have been swapped between species to influence traits, a totally unknown behavior has never been genetically swapped into a different animal before.

Nagoya University researchers achieved this remarkable feat by manipulating a single gene to create new neural connections and transfer behavior between two distinct fruit flies, Drosophila subobscura and D. melanogaster. While both species belong to the family Drosophilidae, they have distinct neural circuits that drive very different mating behaviors.

It’s the culmination of nearly a decade’s work by several members of the Japanese team, including co-first author Ryoya Tanaka, who in 2017 led a study mapping and comparing the mating circuits of the two fly species – D. melanogaster, which courts by singing, and D. subobscura, which regurgitates food as a romantic gesture („gift-giving“). By using optogenetics to trigger gift-giving in D. subobscura, they confirmed that a gene called Fruitless (Fru) – present in both species – played a key role in courtship, but controled very different behaviours in each.

Now, the Japanese researchers have taken this to a completely new level, using genetic manipulation to turn D. melanogaster males – who diverged from the other species around 35 million years ago – into gift givers, not singers. While we can’t say for sure, when the increasingly distinct species continued down their own path of evolution from a common ancestor, environmental pressures and mating preferences would have shaped their „love language.“ One refined its wing muscles and song circuits to produce the sonic courtship ritual, the other boosting the visual and motor circuits for regurgitating and presenting food to a female.

Essentially, turning D. melanogaster flies into gift-givers is not something that can be „unlocked“ – it vanished possibly tens of millions of years ago.