Male age influence on male reproductive success inDrosophila ananassae(Diptera: Drosophilidae)

Abstract

Male age influence on male mating success, courtship, mating activities, fecundity, fertility, longevity, percentage of egg-larval hatchability and percentage of larva-adult viability has been studied in Drosophila ananassae. It was noticed that females of D. ananassae were able to discriminate males on the basis of male age and preferred to mate with old-aged males more frequently than younger or middle-aged males using a female choice experiment. Old-aged males significantly mated faster, performed greater courtship activities, copulated longer and inseminated more females in a given unit of time, showed greater fecundity, fertility, percentage of egg-larval hatchability, percentage of larva-adult viability, and females mated to old-aged males lived shorter than those mated to younger or middle-aged males. Thus in D. ananassae females discriminate males on the basis of age and females mated to old-aged males had significantly greater reproductive success than that of females mated to younger or middle-aged males.

Relationship between Male Age, Accessory Gland, Sperm Transferred, and Fitness Traits inDrosophila bipectinata

“…In the present study on D. bipectinata , females who mated with old males received more protein and more sperm, allowing them to have a higher fecundity and produce more progeny than females who mated with young and middle-age males ( Tables 3 and 4 , Figure 5 ). This result could be why females of D. bipectinata prefer older males more than middle-age and young males, as was noticed in an earlier study on three different geographical strains ( Prathibha and Krishna, 2011 ; Somashekar and Krishna 2011 ). Although only one strain was used in our present study, because the female preference for old males was found in all the three geographical populations of D. bipectinata in other studies, the results of the present study in relation to accessory gland variation in young, middle, and old males and its effect on fecundity and fertility could also be extended to other strains.…”

Homeostatic maintenance and age-related functional decline in the Drosophila ear

“…We did, however, observe courtship behaviour (wing extension) in 60-day old males when paired with younger virgin females (data not quantified); consistent with this, so far no study has reported a cut-off age for male mating drive in Drosophilid flies. While individual parameters of male mating performance decline with age 32 ; other parameters appear to increase 33 , suggesting that the observed loss of response is not a loss of mating interest per se. Moreover, baseline locomotor activities of 60-day-old flies were the same as in 10-day-old flies (Fig.…”

Disentangling the effects of male age and mating history: Contrasting effects of mating history on precopulatory mating behavior and paternity success

“…In support of this claim, some studies show that older males expend more effort when fighting for mates (e.g., Kemp 2006;Fischer et al 2008;Okada et al 2020). Likewise, older males are often more persistent during courtship (e.g., Pérez-Staples et al 2010;Prathibha et al 2011;Karl and Fischer 2013;Rodríguez-Muñoz et al 2019). Intriguingly, however, a new meta-analysis reported a nonsignif-icant trend for older males to invest less into sexual signaling (Dougherty 2021).…”