How fruit flies sniff out their environments

Fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—have a complicated relationship with carbon dioxide. In some contexts, CO2 indicates the presence of tasty food sources as sugar-fermenting yeast in fruit produces the molecule as a ...

Aggression de-escalation gene identified in fruit flies

The brain mechanisms that cause aggressive behavior have been well studied. Far less understood are the processes that tell the body when it's time to stop fighting. Now, a new study by Salk scientists identifies a gene and ...

How a gene mutation leads to higher intelligence

When genes mutate, this can lead to severe diseases of the human nervous system. Researchers at Leipzig University and the University of Würzburg have now used fruit flies to demonstrate how, apart from the negative effect, ...

Flies navigate using complex mental math

The treadmills in Rachel Wilson's laboratories at Harvard Medical School aren't like any you'll find at a gym. They're spherical, for one, and encased in bowling ball–sized plastic bubbles. They're also built for flies.

How a fly's brain calculates its position in space

Navigation doesn't always go as planned—a lesson that flies learn the hard way, when a strong headwind shunts them backward in defiance of their forward-beating wings. Fish swimming upriver, crabs scuttling sideways, and ...

A heart that beats (almost) like our own

The fruit fly, long the organism of choice for scientists studying genetics and basic biological processes, still harbors some secrets of its own.

page 2 from 9