Ageing via sexual perception is a by-product of male adaptive plasticity inDrosophila melanogaster

ABSTRACTSensory perception of environmental cues can dramatically modulate ageing across distant taxa. For example, maleDrosophila melanogasterage faster if they perceive female cues but fail to mate (ageing via sexual perception). This finding has been a breakthrough for our understanding of the mechanisms of ageing, yet we ignore how and why such responses have evolved. Here, we usedD. melanogasterto ask whether ageing via sexual perception may be a by-product of plastic adaptive responses to female cues, and found that while long-term sexual perception leads to reproductive costs, short-term perception increases male lifetime reproductive success in a competitive environment. Simulations…