How does flies mate

If both flies are already on a stable surface, the male jumps on top of the female. The entire mating process lasts from 30 minutes to two hours, notes Animal Diversity Web. Females usually mate only once, while males mate with many females. Males have definite preferences when they choose females. Researchers at Chungnam National University studied housefly courtship and mating practices and discovered that males preferred to mate with large 7-day-old females.

It might sound as if finding a female would be an easy task, but some males mistakenly target other males or even inanimate objects. The female uses her ovipositor to make a hole in the manure, garbage or other decaying material she has selected and releases her fertilized eggs. Transitivity has been shown in other animals, such as some bird species, while searching for food.

The researchers showed that individual male fruit flies from one wild-derived strain, called Canton-S, displayed transitivity when presented with potential female mates from 10 different laboratory strains of fruit flies.

In these tests, a researcher would place one Canton-S male in an arena with a pair of females, each from a different strain, and note if the male mated with either female. To account for all possible pairings of females from the 10 strains, they tested Canton-S males against 45 pairs of females. No fly, male or female, was tested more than once. After repeating these tests 10 to 20 times for each combination, the researchers discovered that Canton-S males displayed a consistent, ranked preference regarding which female to mate with.

Female fruit flies under a black light, revealing the colors they were marked with by the researchers. Using the same assays, they showed that males from a second strain, Oregon-R, also display transitivity with females from the 10 laboratory strains.

There were only a few small differences between the hierarchies displayed by Oregon-R males and Canton-S males, said Arbuthnott. Though the researchers only tested mate choice in male flies, the decision to mate in this species is definitely a two-way street. But Arbuthnott focused on male mate choice in these experiments to help dispel a misconception about mating in many animal species.

Normal male fruit flies follow a female around to get a whiff before deciding to pursue her further. Scent-deprived males show less interest in females, and are more likely to lose a girl to another guy. It makes sense because growing up alone could signal that future mating options may be slim -- why put in the effort? On the other hand, males raised in groups respond more strongly to pheromones than their socially isolated counterparts, presumably because they may face stiff competition later on, and must step up their game with the ladies.

In the new study , published May 22 in Science Advances, researchers have figured out how males dial their scent sensitivity up or down to court when conditions are right for mating.

There, olfactory neurons detect odor molecules wafting past and send the information to the brain. Duke University biologist Pelin Volkan and colleagues raised some male fruit flies in groups, and isolated others in separate vials. This makes him better at detecting the scent of other flies and more likely to outcompete rival males for mates.