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Male-male interactions shape mate selection in Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Males of many species have evolved behavioral traits to both attract females and repel rivals. Here, we explore mate selection in Drosophila from both the male and female perspective to shed light on how these key components of sexual selection - female choice and male-male competition - work in concert to guide reproductive strategies. We find that male flies fend off competing suitors by interleaving their courtship of a female with aggressive wing flicks, which both repel competitors and generate a 'song' that obscures the female's auditory perception of other potential mates. Two higher-order circuit nodes - P1a and pC1x neurons - are coordinately recruited to allow males to flexibly interleave these agonistic actions with courtship displays, assuring they persistently pursue females until their rival falters. Together, our results suggest that female mating decisions are shaped by male-male interactions, underscoring how a male's ability to subvert his rivals is central to his reproductive success.

SUBMITTER: Sten TH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10635267 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Male-male interactions shape mate selection in <i>Drosophila</i>.

Sten Tom Hindmarsh TH Li Rufei R Hollunder Florian F Eleazer Shadé S Ruta Vanessa V

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology 20231105

Males of many species have evolved behavioral traits to both attract females and repel rivals. Here, we explore mate selection in <i>Drosophila</i> from both the male and female perspective to shed light on how these key components of sexual selection - female choice and male-male competition - work in concert to guide reproductive strategies. We find that male flies fend off competing suitors by interleaving their courtship of a female with aggressive wing flicks, which both repel competitors a ...[more]

PMID: 37961193

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Project description:Male songbirds use song to advertise their attractiveness as potential mates, and the properties of those songs have a powerful influence on female mate preferences. One idea is that males may exert themselves maximally in each song performance, consistent with female evaluation and formation of mate preferences being the primary contributors to mate choice. Alternatively, males may modulate their song behaviour to different degrees in the presence of different females, consistent with both male and female mate preferences contributing to mutual mate choice. Here we consider whether male Bengalese finches, Lonchura striata domestica, express mate preferences at the level of individual females, and whether those preferences are manifest as changes in song behaviour that are sufficient to influence female mate choice. We tested this idea by recording songs performed by individual unmated males during a series of 1 h interactions with each of many unmated females. Across recording sessions, males systematically varied both the quantity and the quality of the songs that they performed to different females. Males also varied their song properties throughout the course of each interaction, and behavioural tests using female birds revealed that songs performed at the onset of each interaction were significantly more attractive than songs performed by the same male later during the same interaction. This demonstration of context-specific variation in the properties of male reproductive signals and a role for that variation in shaping female mate preference reveals that male mate preferences play an important role in mutual mate choice in this species. Because these birds thrive so well in the laboratory and are so amenable to observation and experimentation across generations, these results yield a new model system that may prove especially advantageous in disentangling the role of male and female mate preferences in shaping mutual mate choice and its long-term benefits or consequences.

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Male-male interactions shape mate selection in Drosophila.

Publications

Male-male interactions shape mate selection in <i>Drosophila</i>.

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Dataset Information

Male-male interactions shape mate selection in Drosophila.

Publications

Male-male interactions shape mate selection in &lt;i&gt;Drosophila&lt;/i&gt;.

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OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

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Male-male interactions shape mate selection in <i>Drosophila</i>.