ArticleCurrent biology : CB2018
Wild African Drosophila melanogaster Are Seasonal Specialists on Marula Fruit.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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59 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Receptor sequence divergence, gain, loss, duplication, and neofunctionalization drive olfactory adaptation inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The distribution of fitness effects of new mutations in regulatory regions of thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Lactose-Derived Carbohydrates Induce Sexually Dimorphic Nutritional Programming Effects on Lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster.Aging cell · 2026Article
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- Experimental assessment of 3D-printed traps and chemical attractants for the collection of wildFly · 2025Article
- Variation in the resource environment affects patterns of seasonal adaptation at phenotypic and genomic levels inEvolution letters · 2025Article
- Genomic plasticity drives olfactory adaptation in a pest fly.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neuropeptide dynamics coordinate layered plasticity mechanisms adaptingScience advances · 2025Article
- Continent-wide differentiation of fitness traits and patterns of climate adaptation among European populations ofEvolution letters · 2025Article
- Footprints of Worldwide Adaptation in Structured Populations of Drosophila melanogaster Through the Expanded DEST 2.0 Genomic Resource.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Neuroecology of alcohol risk and reward: Methanol boosts pheromones and courtship success inScience advances · 2025Article
- Latitudinal Clines in Climate and Sleep Patterns Shape Disease Outcomes inEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Sex Pheromone Mediates Resource Partitioning BetweenEvolutionary applications · 2024Article
- GALDAR: A genetically encoded galactose sensor for visualizing sugar metabolism in vivo.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Fantastic beasts and how to study them: rethinking experimental animal behavior.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
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Abstract
Although the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster is arguably the most studied organism on the planet, fundamental aspects of this species' natural ecology have remained enigmatic [1]. We have here investigated a wild population of D. melanogaster from a mopane forest in Zimbabwe. We find that these flies are closely associated with marula fruit (Sclerocarya birrea) and propose that this seasonally abundant and predominantly Southern African fruit is a key ancestral host of D. melanogaster. Moreover, when fruiting, marula is nearly exclusively used by D. melanogaster, suggesting that these forest-dwelling D. melanogaster are seasonal specialists, in a similar manner to, e.g., Drosophila erecta on screw pine cones [2]. We further demonstrate that the main chemicals released by marula activate odorant receptors that mediate species-specific host choice (Or22a) [3, 4] and oviposition site selection (Or19a) [5]. The Or22a-expressing neurons-ab3A-respond strongly to the marula ester ethyl isovalerate, a volatile rarely encountered in high amounts in other fruit. We also show that Or22a differs among African populations sampled from a wide range of habitats, in line with a function associated with host fruit usage. Flies from Southern Africa, most of which carry a distinct allele at the Or22a/Or22b locus, have ab3A neurons that are more sensitive to ethyl isovalerate than, e.g., European flies. Finally, we discuss the possibility that marula, which is also a culturally and nutritionally important resource to humans, may have helped the transition to commensalism in D. melanogaster.
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