ArticleNature2016
Natural courtship song variation caused by an intronic retroelement in an ion channel gene.
Article in Nature, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
83 citing papers in PubMed, 175 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cross-Species Social Experience Suppresses Aggression in Drosophila.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Evolutionary basis of male same-sex sexual behavior by multiple pheromone switches in Drosophila.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Article
- Evidence for natural selection shaping the evolution of collective behavior among globalbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neural evolution of complex motor behaviors: insights from Drosophila courtship song.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2025Review
- Evolutionary basis of intermale sexual behavior by multiple pheromone switches inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals.Molecular ecology · 2025Review
- Evolutionary expansion of the corticospinal system is linked to dexterity inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Courtship song differs between African and European populations of Drosophila melanogaster and involves a strong effect locus.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Genetic, developmental, and neural changes underlying the evolution of butterfly mate preference.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Double trouble: two retrotransposons triggered a cascade of invasions in Drosophila species within the last 50 years.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Testing the genomic overlap between intraspecific mating traits and interspecific mating barriers.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- DNA Transposons Favor De Novo Transcript Emergence Through Enrichment of Transcription Factor Binding Motifs.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Genome Assembly of the Dyeing Poison Frog Provides Insights into the Dynamics of Transposable Element and Genome-Size Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Naturally segregating genetic variants contribute to thermal tolerance in a Drosophila melanogaster model system.Genetics · 2024Article
- Evolution of neural circuitry and cognition.Biology letters · 2024Review
- Elevated ozone disrupts mating boundaries in drosophilid flies.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Neuromodulation and the toolkit for behavioural evolution: can ecdysis shed light on an old problem?The FEBS journal · 2024Review
- Fantastic beasts and how to study them: rethinking experimental animal behavior.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- A predisposed motor bias shapes individuality in vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
23 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal species display enormous variation for innate behaviours, but little is known about how this diversity arose. Here, using an unbiased genetic approach, we map a courtship song difference between wild isolates of Drosophila simulans and Drosophila mauritiana to a 966 base pair region within the slowpoke (slo) locus, which encodes a calcium-activated potassium channel. Using the reciprocal hemizygosity test, we confirm that slo is the causal locus and resolve the causal mutation to the evolutionarily recent insertion of a retroelement in a slo intron within D. simulans. Targeted deletion of this retroelement reverts the song phenotype and alters slo splicing. Like many ion channel genes, slo is expressed widely in the nervous system and influences a variety of behaviours; slo-null males sing little song with severely disrupted features. By contrast, the natural variant of slo alters a specific component of courtship song, illustrating that regulatory evolution of a highly pleiotropic ion channel gene can cause modular changes in behaviour.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.