The role of courtship song in sexual selection and species recognition by female Drosophila melanogaster
Section snippets
Stocks and culture
Two wild-type stocks were used. To produce the first, equal numbers of males and females from each of six nonmutant cultures (Argyle, PBS Israel, Z53, Canton-S, Chateau Tahbilk and Nairobi) were allowed to interbreed freely. This resulted in a mixed wild-type stock, which grew vigorously and was maintained in mass culture. When the mixed wild-type stock was not used, Canton-S flies were used instead.
Flies were raised on a medium containing cornmeal, malt, yeast and molasses, with propionic acid
Is song playback effective?
Playback of artificial or recorded song to females in the presence of wingless males partially rescued mating compared with that found in the presence of wingless males without playback (negative controls). Mating levels never achieved that seen when females were exposed to normal song produced by males with wings (winged males, considered positive controls; Figure 2, Talyn and Dowse, 2003).
Is courtship effort affected by courtship song?
Male CE varied within and across sets and experiments, but largely in a treatment (song type)-independent
Pulse song and duty cycle
We report evidence that females use pulse song duty cycle to select among conspecifics, preferring more energetic songs (more pulse trains per unit time or longer pulse trains). This is reasonable, because larger D. melanogaster males produce longer pulse trains (Ewing, 1964, Partridge et al., 1987a) and are more attractive to females (Partridge and Farquhar, 1983, Partridge et al., 1987b, Pitnick, 1991). Preference for high duty cycle is also common in other species. For example, female grey
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to Nancy Curtis, C.-F. Wu and the Bloomington Stock Center for providing flies; and to meteorologist Steve McKay (Channel 2, Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.), who provided some of the barometric pressure data. Thanks to Jim Benedix for valuable conversation; to Daphne Fairbairn, Wade Hazel, Jeff Hall, Sue Morris, John Ringo, Ann Hedrick and two anonymous referees for comments on the manuscript; and to Wordsworth Typing and Editing Services, Plainfield, Vermont, U.S.A. for providing
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2019, Current BiologyCitation Excerpt :The responses are well explained by a linear combination of the responses to individual sine or pulse trains. Deviations from linearity occur due to sound onset responses, but otherwise responses do not strongly depend on the order of presentation in a bout (see also [52]). This suggests that these stimuli are processed in independent pathways.
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2018, Current BiologyCitation Excerpt :Surprisingly, we find that tonotopy is a prominent feature of the AMMC and WED in the Drosophila brain, suggesting there may be more functional similarity than previously suspected in the auditory systems of insects and vertebrates. The prominence of tonotopy in the AMMC and WED—and the narrowness of frequency tuning in the WED—is also surprising for yet another reason: spectral cues are reportedly irrelevant for determining behavioral responses to courtship song in Drosophila [58–60]. However, courtship behaviors are not the only behaviors that depend on Johnston’s organ.
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H. B. Dowse is at the Department of Biological Sciences, 5751 Murray Hall, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5751, U.S.A.