How fruit flies sniff out their environments

Fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—have a complicated relationship with carbon dioxide. In some contexts, CO2 indicates the presence of tasty food sources as sugar-fermenting yeast in fruit produces the molecule as a by-product. But in other cases, CO2 can be a warning to stay away, signaling an oxygen-poor or overcrowded environment with too many other flies. How do flies tell the difference?


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Source: Phys.org