Joel Levine
University of Toronto at Mississauga
Synchrony in Drosophila melanogaster: From Peripheral Cells to Group Dynamics
12:00 pm, Monday 05 December 2016
Location: Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, Large Lecture Theatre, Sherrington Building
Abstract: The fly has been classified as a solitary creature with a limited repertoire of social behaviors that include reproductive interactions such as courtship and mating as well as fighting. Recent studies from our lab and others have shown that social context modulates individual behavior and that group level behaviors become evident when patterns of interaction are viewed as networks. I will discuss studies from our lab that define a neuropeptidergic pathway which controls pheromone expression and mediates social modulation of mating frequency. I will also provide an update on our ongoing analysis of social networks in Drosophila.
Biography: Joel Levine is Professor of Biology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1993 for work on retinohypothalamic projections in the female albino rat and subsequently was a post-doctoral fellow with F. Rob Jackson at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, studying the genetic basis of biological clocks in Drosophila; with Steven Reppert at Harvard Medical School, studying circadian mechanisms in the silkmoth Antheria pernyi; and with Jeff Hall at Brandeis University, where he began to study the neurogenetics of social behavior in the fly. Levine started his own lab at the University of Toronto at Mississauga in 2004.