There she is again: the cute girl at the mall. Big eyes. Long legs. She smiles at you. You’re about to make your move… but wait! What’s she wearing? It’s a letterman jacket, one clearly belonging to a hulking football player named “Steve.” This girl is taken. Wisely, you move on.
Countless teen movies have told the same tale, but behind the fiction is an essential, biological reality: Humans base their behavioral decisions, such as whom to court, on cues gleaned from their environment. The same holds true for all of the animal world, as a paper due to be published this week in Current Biology reminds us. In it, Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers, along with German colleagues, report on a newly discovered pheromone produced by male fruit flies. They found that the pheromone, which they named CH503 for its molecular mass, acts as the chemical equivalent of the “letterman jacket” when transferred to females during the mating process. CH503 remains on the female’s outer body, warding off male suitors for at least a week. This anti-aphrodisiac effect helps to account for previously noted mating behaviors in fruit flies that have until now gone unexplained.
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