Search results for "Court"
showing 10 items of 472 documents
Sexual and postmating reproductive isolation between allopatric Drosophila montana populations suggest speciation potential
2011
This work was funded by a European Commission Research Training Grant RTN2-2001-00049, the Centre of Excellence for Evolutionary Research at the University of Jyväskylä and a Marie Curie Initial Training Network, ‘Understanding the evolutionary origin of biological diversity’ (ITN-2008-213780 SPECIATION) Background: Widely distributed species with populations adapted to different environmental conditions can provide valuable opportunities for tracing the onset of reproductive incompatibilities and their role in the speciation process. Drosophila montana, a D. virilis group species found in high latitude boreal forests in Nearctic and Palearctic regions around the globe, could be an excellen…
Chemical stimuli induce courtship dominance in Drosophila
2005
Courtship dominance in male Drosophila occurs when a male directs high levels of courtship towards another male, who remains passive [1]. We investigated the cues that shape this effect and report here that it is induced by the perception of adult male cuticular hydrocarbons during a critical period.
Male relatedness and familiarity are required to modulate male-induced harm to females in
2017
Males compete over mating and fertilization, and often harm females in the process. Inclusive fitness theory predicts that increasing relatedness within groups of males may relax competition and discourage male harm of females as males gain indirect benefits. Recent studies in Drosophila melanogaster are consistent with these predictions, and have found that within-group male relatedness increases female fitness, though others have found no effects. Importantly, these studies did not fully disentangle male genetic relatedness from larval familiarity, so the extent to which modulation of harm to females is explained by male familiarity remains unclear. Here we performed a fully factorial des…
Hormonal changes of intimate partner violence perpetrators in response to brief social contact with women
2022
This study investigated whether men with a history of real-life aggressive, dominant behavior show increases in testosterone and cortisol levels after brief social contact with women. Furthermore, we tested the prediction that such changes in hormones would be larger than those observed previously in young male students. Sixty-seven male participants convicted of intimate partner violence (IPV) either had brief social contact with a female confederate (experimental condition) or a male confederate (control condition). We also performed meta-analyses to investigate whether IPV perpetrators' hormonal responses were larger than the typical responses of young male students in prior studies. All…
The Structure and Usage of Female and Male Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations Reveal only Minor Differences
2012
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) of mice are increasingly recognized as informative dependent variables in studies using mouse models of human diseases. While pup vocalizations primarily serve to re-establish contact with the mother, adult male ‘‘songs’’ were considered to be courtship signals. Alternatively, mouse USVs may generally function as territorial signals. To distinguish between these two hypotheses, we compared the structure and usage of adult male and female USVs in staged resident-intruder encounters. If calls function primarily as courtship signals, males should respond stronger than females, specifically when presented with a female intruder. Refuting this hypothesis, we found …
Volatile Drosophila cuticular pheromones are affected by social but not sexual experience.
2012
International audience; Recognition of conspecifics and mates is based on a variety of sensory cues that are specific to the species, sex and social status of each individual. The courtship and mating activity of Drosophila melanogaster flies is thought to depend on the olfactory perception of a male-specific volatile pheromone, cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA), and the gustatory perception of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHs), some of which are sexually dimorphic. Using two complementary sampling methods (headspace Solid Phase Micro-Extraction [SPME] and solvent extraction) coupled with GC-MS analysis, we measured the dispersion of pheromonal CHs in the air and on the substrate around the fly. We als…
Prospero mutants induce precocious sexual behavior in Drosophila males.
2007
0001-8244 (Print) Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Brain maturation, a developmental process influenced by both endogenous and environmental factors, can affect sexual behavior. In vertebrates and invertebrates, sexual maturation is under the influence of hormones and neuromodulators, but the role of developmental genes in this process is still poorly understood. We report that prospero (pros), a gene crucial for nervous system development, can change the age of onset of sexual behavior in Drosophila melanogaster males: adult males carrying a single copy of several pros mutations court females and mate at a younger age than control males. However, these pros mutations had n…
Contact with attractive women affects the release of cortisol in men
2010
Previous studies have shown that situations relevant for human mating can affect the levels of many hormones. This study focused on the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis by measuring salivary cortisol levels in 84 young men prior to and after a period of short social contact with a woman or man. Results showed that after contact with another man the cortisol levels of the participants declined according to the circadian release pattern of cortisol. However, cortisol levels in men declined less when they had contact with a woman. Furthermore, cortisol levels of men increased when they perceived the woman with whom they had contact as attractive. Our findings provide indirect evidence for t…
MALE COURTSHIP SONG AND FEMALE PREFERENCE VARIATION BETWEEN PHYLOGEOGRAPHICALLY DISTINCT POPULATIONS OF DROSOPHILA MONTANA
2007
Understanding the variation within and between populations in important male mating traits and female preferences is crucial to theories concerning the origin of sexual isolation by coevolution or other processes. There have been surprisingly few studies on the extent of variation and covariation within and between populations, especially where the evolutionary relationships between populations are understood. Here we examine variation in female preferences and a sexually selected male song trait, the carrier frequency of the song, within and between populations from different phylogeographic clusters of Drosophila montana. Song is obligatory for successful mating in this species, and both …
Two distinct genomic regions, harbouring the period and fruitless genes, affect male courtship song in Drosophila montana
2012
Acoustic signals often have a significant role in pair formation and in species recognition. Determining the genetic basis of signal divergence will help to understand signal evolution by sexual selection and its role in the speciation process. An earlier study investigated quantitative trait locus for male courtship song carrier frequency (FRE) in Drosophila montana using microsatellite markers. We refined this study by adding to the linkage map markers for 10 candidate genes known to affect song production in Drosophila melanogaster. We also extended the analyses to additional song characters (pulse train length (PTL), pulse number (PN), interpulse interval, pulse length (PL) and cycle nu…