Drosophila connectome

A Drosophila connectome is a list of neurons in the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) nervous system, and the chemical synapses between them. The fly's nervous system consists of the brain plus the ventral nerve cord, and both are known to differ considerably between male and female.^[1][2] Dense connectomes have been completed for the female adult brain,^[3] the male nerve cord,^[4] and the female larval stage.^[5] The available connectomes show only chemical synapses - other forms of inter-neuron communication such as gap junctions or neuromodulators are not represented. Drosophila is the most complex creature with a connectome, which had only been previously obtained for three other simpler organisms, first C. elegans.^{[citation needed]} The connectomes have been obtained by the methods of neural circuit reconstruction, which over the course of many years worked up through various subsets of the fly brain to the almost full connectomes that exist today.^{[citation needed]}