Emergence of social cluster by collective pairwise encounters in Drosophila

eLife

Yaxin Cheng¹  Tianyu Wang²  Yincheng Zhong²  Lifen Jiang³  Yan Zhu⁴  Shan Gao⁴  Chengrui Ma⁴ 

[1] State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;School of Life Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China;State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;

关键词: Drosophila;    collective behaviour;    social cluster;    pairwise interactions;    emergent structure;    mechanosensation;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.51921

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Many animals exhibit an astonishing ability to form groups of large numbers of individuals. The dynamic properties of such groups have been the subject of intensive investigation. The actual grouping processes and underlying neural mechanisms, however, remain elusive. Here, we established a social clustering paradigm in Drosophila to investigate the principles governing social group formation. Fruit flies spontaneously assembled into a stable cluster mimicking a distributed network. Social clustering was exhibited as a highly dynamic process including all individuals, which participated in stochastic pair-wise encounters mediated by appendage touches. Depriving sensory inputs resulted in abnormal encounter responses and a high failure rate of cluster formation. Furthermore, the social distance of the emergent network was regulated by ppk-specific neurons, which were activated by contact-dependent social grouping. Taken together, these findings revealed the development of an orderly social structure from initially unorganised individuals via collective actions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown