Abstract
Recent evidence shows that females of many species can discriminate against males and/or male phenotypes they have mated with previously. However, these studies have not tested whether actual mating is necessary to induce the avoidance behaviour. A preference for strangers may have evolved because it avoids multiple matings with similar genotypes. Alternatively, there may be selection against mating with familiar individuals directly. By choosing its first mate among unfamiliar individuals (which are less likely close relatives than are those encountered early in life), a virgin might disentangle some of the potential benefits of avoiding genetic incompatibility and inbreeding in the offspring from the costs of remating. In this study, we test whether Drosophila melanogaster flies bias their mate choice towards strangers according to previous, non-copulatory, experience. Based on 173 trials over 12 weeks, virgin females presented with two virgin males were 59% more likely to mate with a novel male than the one which she had been housed with for 8 h the day before. Hence we present the first report showing that a dipteran can distinguish between previously encountered and not previously encountered conspecifics.
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Acknowledgements
Arne Ø. Mooers involvement was instrumental to every phase of this project, from conceiving of the original idea to contributing to previous versions of the article. Carolina Stachon provided extensive help in running the experiments, and the SFU FAB*lab, G. Gries, A.C. Kamil, M. Salomon and three anonymous referees made useful comments. This work was funded by NSERC Canada (Arne Ø Mooers), The Swedish Research Council (AÖ), and an SFU Graduate Research Fellowship (CMM). The experiments comply with current Canadian law.
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Ödeen, A., Moray, C.M. Drosophila melanogaster virgins are more likely to mate with strangers than familiar flies. Naturwissenschaften 95, 253–256 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-007-0314-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-007-0314-3