What Does It Take To Make A Male Fruit Fly Irresistible To The Females

There has been a question in the back of every scientist’s mind for a very long time, and that question is, what is it that makes some male fruit flies so intensely desirable to female fruit flies? After All, there are some male fruit flies that seem to get all of the ladies, and scientists want to know why.

Well, ok, maybe that is not the exact question that led to a recent study exploring the phenomenon of insect attraction, but the results were revealing. It turns out that male fruit flies that hail from male dominated environments end up securing more females.

The male dominated environments were not monogamous environments where one male is paired with one female, rather the male dominated environments were labeled polyandrous, which means that there is an unequal amount of members of each sex and therefore sexual competition in these polyandrous environments is fierce. However, it is to the males benefit to reach maturity in a highly competitive polyandrous environment because the males learn to compete in a highly effective manner, and therefore they secure more females for reproduction than males that reached maturity in non-competitive and monogamous environments. So, in other words, all of that constant competition among the fruit flies in the polyandrous environment trained those males to outcompete the inexperienced monogamous males. Sounds somewhat similar to human sexual behavior.

Do you think that fruit flies can serve as a model for human social functioning despite the tremendous physical differences between humans and fruit flies?