The Department of Biology is excited to invite you to a seminar entitled "From genes to circuits: encoding the evolutionary diversification of sexual behaviors in Drosophila" by Dr. Yun Ding, Assistant Professor at The University of Pennsylvania on Monday, April 20th at 3pm in BL234. We kindly ask you to make every effort to attend.

Host: Dr. David Chen

More information about the speaker here: https://www.bio.upenn.edu/people/yun-ding

Abstract: Animal species exhibit remarkable diversity in behavior, yet understanding how evolutionary changes in genes and neural circuits give rise to these species-specific behaviors remains a major challenge. My lab addresses this question using Drosophila species, which display a rich repertoire of courtship behaviors, including singing and dancing during dynamic social interactions. I will present findings from two case studies: one on the evolution of male courtship song and the other on a newly originated female wing display. I will then share how we leverage single-cell transcriptomics to understand the molecular and cellular substrates of behavioral evolution, including how neural circuits encoding sexual behaviors evolve under a shared developmental origin but sex-specific fitness optima.