Aggression involves both sexually monomorphic and dimorphic actions. How the brain implements these two types of actions is poorly understood. We found that in Drosophila melanogaster, a set of neurons, which we call CL062, previously shown to mediate male aggression also mediate female aggression. These neurons elicit aggression acutely and without the presence of a target. Although the same set of actions is elicited in males and females, the overall behavior is sexually dimorphic. The CL062 neurons do not express fruitless, a gene required for sexual dimorphism in flies, and expressed by most other neurons important for controlling fly aggression. Connectomic analysis in a female electron microscopy dataset suggests that these neurons have limited connections with fruitless expressing neurons that have been shown to be important for aggression and signal to different descending neurons. Thus, CL062 is part of a monomorphic circuit for aggression that functions parallel to the known dimorphic circuits.

攻击行为涉及性单态和二态行为。人们对大脑如何实现这两种类型的动作知之甚少。我们发现，在黑腹果蝇中，一组我们称之为 CL062 的神经元，先前被证明可以介导男性攻击性，也介导女性攻击性。这些神经元在没有目标的情况下急性地引发攻击性。尽管在男性和女性中引发了相同的动作，但整体行为是性二态的。CL062 神经元不表达 fruitless，这是果蝇性二态性所需的基因，并且由大多数其他对控制果蝇攻击很重要的神经元表达。女性电子显微镜数据集中的连接组学分析表明，这些神经元与无果表达神经元的连接有限，这些神经元已被证明对攻击性和向不同的下降神经元发出信号很重要。因此，CL062 是与已知双态回路平行运行的单态攻击回路的一部分。