Affiliation:
1. Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College LondonDarwin Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
2. School of Biological Sciences, University of East AngliaNorwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Abstract
Male seminal fluid proteins induce a profound remodelling of behavioural, physiological and gene signalling pathways in females of many taxa, and typically cause elevated egg production and decreased sexual receptivity. In
Drosophila melanogaster
, these effects can be mediated by an ejaculate ‘sex peptide’ (SP), which, in addition, contributes significantly to the cost of mating in females. Recent research has revealed that SP can stimulate female post-copulatory feeding, raising the possibility that the widespread female cost of mating could be due to over-feeding. In this study, we used
D. melanogaster
as a model to test this hypothesis. We first show that elevated post-mating feeding is dependent upon egg production and does not occur in sterile
ovo
D1
mutant females. This conclusion was also supported by the increase in feeding of virgin females whose egg production was experimentally elevated. We then demonstrated that sterile
ovo
D1
and fertile females experienced identical survival costs of mating, related to their frequency of mating and not to female feeding rate or to egg production. We conclude that female mating costs are not the result of over-feeding, but may be due to other, potentially more direct, effects of ejaculate molecules.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
122 articles.
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