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Mating kinetics in drosophila
Author(s) -
Wallace Bruce
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830300305
Subject(s) - courtship , mating , biology , drosophila melanogaster , courtship display , sepia , reproduction , zoology , demography , ecology , botany , genetics , gene , sociology , officinalis
The kinetics of the mating behavior of a sepia ‐eyed strain of Drosophila melanogaster has been studied using a newly designed mating chamber. Numbers of males and females placed in the chamber for 30 minutes varied from 5 males and 10 females to 320 flies of each sex. For a given number of females the log proportion of non‐mated (i.e., virgin) females decreased linearly as the number of males increased; this relationship can be expressed as (1 ‐ v ) n where v is the attrition rate of virginity and n is the number of males in the chamber. Further, the log v decreases linearly with the square‐root of the number of females in the chamber. If males were to divide their courtship behaviors among two or more females under crowded conditions, v should be a function of (1/ x ) 8 where x is the number of females available to the courting male and s is one less than the number of elements in his courtship behavior. The number of available females, x , is a function of linear distances between individuals; the number of flies in the chamber must be quadrupled in order to halve the average distance between individuals—hence, the need for the square‐root scale.