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Mating behavior as an indicator of quality of Drosophila subobscura males?
Author(s) -
Savic Veselinovic Marija,
PavkovicLucic Sofija,
Kurbalija Novicic Zorana,
Jelic Mihailo,
StamenkovicRadak Marina,
Andjelkovic Marko
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
insect science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.991
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1744-7917
pISSN - 1672-9609
DOI - 10.1111/1744-7917.12257
Subject(s) - biology , courtship , mating , drosophila subobscura , sexual selection , genetics , sexual conflict , trait , antagonistic coevolution , evolutionary biology , zoology , gene , computer science , programming language
According to current theoretical predictions, any deleterious mutations that reduce nonsexual fitness may have a negative influence on mating success. This means that sexual selection may remove deleterious mutations from the populations. Males of good genetic quality should be more successful in mating, compared to the males of lower genetic quality. As mating success is a condition dependent trait, large fractions of the genome may be a target of sexual selection and many behavioral traits are likely to be condition dependent. We manipulated the genetic quality of Drosophila subobscura males by inducing mutations with ionizing radiation and observed the effects of the obtained heterozygous mutations on male mating behavior: courtship occurrence, courtship latency, mating occurrence, latency to mating and duration of mating. We found possible effects of mutations. Females mated more frequently with male progeny of nonirradiated males and that these males courted females faster compared to the male progeny of irradiated males. Our findings indicate a possible important role of sexual selection in purging deleterious mutations.