Feeding, Fecundity And Lifespan In Female Drosophila Melanogaster

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 18 Apr 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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Males transfer a cocktail of substances other than sperm during mating, and these induce a profound remodelling of female behaviour and physiology.

In fruitflies, a male 'sex peptide' (SP) contributes to the female 'cost of mating' and causes females to feed at higher levels after mating, suggesting that female mating costs could be due to over-feeding.

We show that the extent to which female lifespan is shortened is related to the frequency of mating and not to feeding or egg laying rate. Hence females showing high survival costs of mating do not do so because they eat too much.

Dr. Tracey Chapman, University of East Anglia (UK)

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