One, two, and many – A perspective on what groups of Drosophila melanogaster can tell us about social dynamics

This week’s paper is all about the social lives of flies and what they can tell us about behavior more generally. Jonathan Schneider and Jade Atallah (Levine Lab) recently published: “One, two, and many – A perspective on what groups of Drosophila melanogaster can tell us about social dynamics”. This review appears in the recently published book Gene-Environment Interplay. Social behavior is typically studied as pairwise interactions between individuals and Jonathan and Jade take a critical look at whether what holds true for a pair of interacting individuals scales up to social environments that are more complex. They find that the behavior and gene expression associated with the behavior is sensitive to group complexity and experience. Thus, behavioral research on pairwise interactions may result in biased conclusions that have little implications for interactions in nature.

Congratulations on this thought provoking review!

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