Biology Reference
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as to why an evolutionary alternative to sleep has not emerged,” although it
is not clear how the ability to survive sleep loss can confer a fitness advantage.
Another gene,
Chaser
, affects larval foraging by increasing foraging path length
(
Pereira et al. 1995
).
11.4.1.4 Other Behaviors Influenced by One or a Few Genes
Crossing experiments indicate that one or a few genes influence a specific
behavior in the flour moth
Ephestia kuhniella
(silk-mat spinning by larvae
before pupation), the mosquito
Aedes atropalpus
(egg maturation without
an exogenous source of protein such as blood), and the parasitoid wasp
Habrobracon juglandis
(flightlessness) (
Ehrman and Parsons 1981
). In
Bombyx
mori
, females with the
piled egg
gene deposit eggs in a peculiar manner;
B. mori
larvae with the
Non-preference
gene are unable to discriminate mulberry
leaves from others (
Tazima et al. 1975
), and
Huettel and Bush (1972)
found
that when two monophagous tephritid flies (
Procecidochares
) were crossed,
the host-preference behavior segregated in a manner consistent with control
by a single locus.
Desjardins et al. (2010)
found that crosses in the laboratory
between the parasitoids
Nasonia vitripennis
and
N. giraulti
resulted in a change
in host-preference behavior. This behavior was found to be dominant and was
localized to 16 Mb of sequence on chromosome 4.
A variety of behavioral mutants determined by single-major genes have been
identified in
D. melanogaster
(
(Grossfield 1975, Hall 1985, Pavlidis et al. 1994
),
including a group of sex-linked, incompletely dominant mutants (
Shaker
,
Hyperkinetic
, and
eag
) that are expressed when the flies are anesthetized
with ether. The sex-linked temperature-sensitive recessive mutant
para
ts
causes
D. melanogaster
to become immobile above 29°C. Mutants of the
couch potato
(
cpo
) locus cause flies to be hypoactive and exhibit abnormal geotaxis (response
to gravity), phototaxis (response to light), and light behavior. This gene is
unusually complex, spanning
>
100kb and encoding three different messages
(
Bellen et al. 1992
).
Many “single-gene” mutants that affect the morphology of
D. melanogaster
affect behavior because they are unable to perform the reaction to a stim-
ulus due to altered effector structures. Other mutants exhibit altered behavior
because perception of cues is impaired. For example, flies with
white
eyes may
exhibit abnormal courtship behaviors (
(Grossfield 1975
).
Pheromone communication in the European corn borer is genetically deter-
mined (
Klun and Maini 1979, Klun and Huettel 1988, Löfstedt et al. 1989,
Löfstedt 1990
). Females of the E- and Z-strains of
Ostrinia nubilalis
produce dif-
ferent
enantiomeric
ratios of sex pheromone. Hybrids between these two strains
