BEIJING, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have identified a specific neuron that makes fruit flies maintain personal space and form orderly clusters.
Many animals can form large orderly groups, which may help animals to find food, escape from predators and enhance sensing of their surroundings. The mechanism behind the collective behavior remains unclear.
Researchers from the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China chose fruit flies to study how individuals interact to form social groups.
They reported in the journal eLife that fruit flies in shallow, covered dishes form orderly clusters with regular space between flies spontaneously. They used their legs and wings to touch each other and establish personal space.
When researchers deprived fruit flies of senses such as sight, touch and odor, the orderly clusters were disrupted.
Further studies showed that the physical interactions of fruit flies switched on a specific neuron at the tip of their legs. Without the so-called ppk neurons, the fruit flies could not establish acceptable distances between each other, resulting in abnormal encounter responses and failure in cluster formation.
The researchers said that they will have more studies to determine whether larger animals have a similar mechanism in spacial relations.
