Duetting in the Drosophila virilis Species Group and Applications in Disease Vector Control

Abstract

In Drosophila, males complete a series of actions in order to court females, which include cues such as touching, licking, and singing. Courtship song is a heritable innate behavior in this genus. Males produce song in order to attract female in most Drosophila species, but in the D. virilis group it has been documented that females also produce auditory cues. We confirmed the presence of female song in 11 of the 12 D. virilis group species and identified male secondary song in six. We conducted in depth analyses of carrier frequency and inter-pulse interval (IPI) of each type of song that suggest a common underlying neural mechanism. The presence of male secondary song may be due to the need for additional cues in a more complex courtship process. We performed latency to mating assays and re-mating assays, as well as recordings with re-mated females that suggest female song indicates receptivity in D. virilis courtship. Preliminary information from male playback experiments to virgin females with wingless males present indicates females do not coordinate their song to the synthesized signal. Studying duetting in D. virilis may provide some of the principles to further investigate mosquito mating, at key target for vector control.