EFTA01154826.pdf

JAN-27-2014 13:57 From:0zymandius Realty To: Page:1/1 NEWS LIFE & EVOLUTION males with 25 female-scented brethren. The detectors for the sex-signaling Fly form of sexual frustration takes toll compounds are particular molecules in Whiff of female but no mating causes males to die young male fruit fly forelegs, Fletcher and his colleagues determined. Fruit flies have BY SUSAN MILIUS abundant ways of sniffing and tasting Smelling female fruit flies but not mat- their environment. When Pletcher and ing with them can actually shorten his team sabotaged a molecular sensor in males' lives. the legs, scent-exposed flies had normal Drosophila melanogaster males not life spans. allowed to mate despite receiving tanta- The experiments may help explain lizing chemical sex messages lose about why male animals of many species have SS to 40 percent of their normal life span, shorter life spans than females, says says molecular geneticist Scott Pletcher Urban Friberg of Uppsala University in of the University of Michigan in Ann Sweden. Males often face 'harsh" com- Arbor. These males' fat stores also dwin- petition for mates, he says, and hethinks dle, and the flies prove less able to cope Fruit flieshave their own version of anticipa- unfulfilled matingexpectations may turn with starvation, Fletcher and his col- tion, and failure tomate as expected turns out out to be less of a problem for females. leagues report November 29 in Science. tohave physiological costs. A nugget of support for the idea that Creating the reciprocal situation of many animals could experience frustra- celibate females sniffing but not mating researchers found. tion effects, Pletcher says, comes from with males wasn't as easy, he say& But so Rescuing the expectation-denied a paper on longevity in nematodes also Science. Hermaphrodite far, experiments show female life span males, however, required an unusually appearing in declining 15 to 20 percent too. high S-to-i female-to-male ratio, notes nematodes that wriggle around on lab males once congregated This marks the second time Pletcher Jennifer Perry of the University of dishes where life spans, report Anne and colleagues have linked premature Oxford. She points out that In Pletcher's have shortened of Stanford University and her demise with frustrated expectations. experiments, routine 1-to-1 mating Brunet There's no mating between Fruit flies on a low-calorie diet, which opportunities didn't much affect the colleagues. normally would lengthen lives and sus- premature demise of frustrated males the males and the hermaphrodites — tain health, lost some of the diet's ben- The males. however, had been set up again, the mere perception of secretions sex triggers physio- efits if the flies lived with the smell of to have unusually high expectations: from different a consequence s. o food they couldn't eat, he and colleagues The researchers had surrounded five logical reported in 2007. Like a person salivating at the odor of ATOM & COSMOS a pie baking, flies pick up cues to likely events and start to prepare physically. Saturn's hexagon Their brains may be monitoring the A six-sided cloud pattern on Saturn has expected events as well as what the flies gotten Its day in the sun. The Cassini actuallyexperience, Fletcher speculates, spacecraft snapped high-resolution and Thad things happen when they don't images of the hexagonal jet stream at match up." the planet's north pole (center right). To see whether odors of inaccessible Using colored filters, the Cassini team mates would affect aging, Pletcher and identified large particles, shown in his colleagues housed normal flies for pink, swirling In the planet's lower two days or more with members of their atmosphere. Large particles at higher own sex engineered to give off the dis- altitudes appear green, and tiny par- tinctive signaling scents of the opposite ticles even higher in the atmosphere sex. That deception let researchers look at the effects of the odor alone without appear blue. Those tiny particles define the sharp boundary of the hexagonal ati any confounding behavioral or visual jet stream, which fuels the clouds. The cues from the opposite sex. roughly 30,000-kilometer-wide cloud Males escaped much of the damage structure has been there for decades of the frustrating experience If they or even centuries. - Ashley Yeager could mate with females afterward, the 10 SCIENCE NEWS I January 11,2014 6._ EFTA01154826