Comments on: Gut bacteria change the sexual preferences of fruit flies

By: Jenny Morber

Jenny Morber — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 02:17:09 +0000

I thought that you might pick this one up. Pretty cool, eh? Makes one wonder how much the microbiome influences human mate choices. I can see headlines in 5 years: “Women who want to attract doctors from Sweden should eat sushi” etc.

By: Shade

Shade — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:06:59 +0000

Thanks for tha answers, incest was just an example of something that has a very high rate of mutation is all.
could have been toxic waste for all it matters.

p.s. as lab rat said, sorry for derailing.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:14:34 +0000

Re: incest. I wrote about a paper a while back suggesting that third-cousin couples have more children/grandchildren than couples who were more/less related. Will repost it at some point.

By: lucas

lucas — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:42:04 +0000

Wow, I had never expected besides temporal, sexual, and spatial differences, now culinary habits can drive species apart! Biology’s beautiful.
While I agree with Sharon’s comment that we should consider the hologenome to understand an organism’s evolution, I think we should take it one step further and consider all these other factors that exert pressures (ecosystems, behaviour etc.). It’s holobiology, so to speak.

By: Lab Rat

Lab Rat — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:40:34 +0000

Wow, fascinating. Loved this post, and so did my undergrad student :p My vote for the reason for the preferences would be smell as well, different bacteria will have very distinct ones, in particular thinking of poo-smell here.

Shade: I’m kinda wary of going into this but basically some mutations are harmful, and some can be useful. Most organisms try to err on the side of having few mutations as possible, but some will occur despite various mechanisms being in place to stop them. And some of those will have useful effects and thus be retained within the organism.

The reason incest is a bad idea is not because it increases mutations but because every human has two copies of each gene. In some cases negative mutations will happen on one gene copy but not the other. If you procreate with a relative it increases the changes that your child will get two copies of the negative mutation and thus will be a lot less healthy.

Also sometimes in evolution you can get big mutations, like whole chunks of genome being moved, duplicated, or deleated. These often lead to severe negative outcomes, but can also lead to positive ones, such as creating two copies of a protein, which can then specialise in different tasks.

[Ed - feel free to delete that if it's derailing the conversation]

By: Shade

Shade — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:27:28 +0000

A question for every one:
Am I misunderstanding evolutionary theory?
You see I personally understand evolution says that small mutations cause the changes we see over time, but i don’t think that that works, due to the fact that biological systems try to stamp out mutations. Incest would make the most evolutonaryly advanced humans otherwise no?

Sorry for this not relating directly to the post, but walter’s comment made me remember this question I had. Nobody thus far has been able to properly elucidate this for me :/

By: Quinn O'Neill

Quinn O'Neill — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:41:17 +0000

Maybe the way to a man’s heart really is through his stomach …

By: chezjake

chezjake — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:08:46 +0000

“Gut bacteria change the sexual preferences of fruit flies”, but it appears that science writer changes sex/gender of researcher.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Ed, but in paragraph 4 I see, “After just two generations, she found the same effect that Dodd did: the flies were more attracted to individuals reared on the same diets.” And in paragraph 5 there is, “This idea was dramatically confirmed when he gave the insects a dose of antibiotics.” In both sentences the antecedent of the personal pronoun seems to be researcher Sharon.

It’s still a fascinating piece of research that is, as usual, well reported.

By: JanedeLartigue

JanedeLartigue — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:39:08 +0000

Really fantastic study, as always written up beautifully by you.
@Mike I was actually going to ask in my comment why they might be driven to mate with flies that smell the same. Great explanation!

By: "Shecky R."

"Shecky R." — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:53:44 +0000

the complexity, intricacy, wonder of biology never ends (even at the level of fruit flies)… fascinating stuff! (I predict more awards coming your way in 2011 )