https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61313-z
https://www.jst.go.jp/pr/announce/20250708/index.html
A research team led by Project Assistant Professor Sato Kiyoaki and Associate Professor Takahashi Yuma of Chiba University has analyzed how fruit flies respond to visual threats such as predators, and revealed that the behavior of surrounding individuals greatly influences their fear response and its alleviation. They also discovered that diversity in the level of fear response and synchronization with other individuals creates benefits for the group, such as making it less likely to be attacked by predators. They also proposed a new genome analysis method to detect genetic mutations related to the “diversity effect” that occurs in groups.