Diet choice is insensitive to mating in male fruit flies

Sydney, Mabel C., Chapman, Tracey and Perry, Jennifer C. (2024) Diet choice is insensitive to mating in male fruit flies. Animal Behaviour, 214. pp. 73-86. ISSN 0003-3472

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Abstract

Animals can adjust their consumption of different nutrients to adaptively match their current or expected physiological state. Changes in diet preference can arise from social and sexual experience. For example, in female Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, a single mating triggers a behavioural switch in diet choice towards increased protein intake and total food consumption, which supports offspring production. In contrast, male diet choice appears to be unaffected by a single mating. However, one mating may not fully capture the impact of mating on male feeding behaviour. Males can often mate multiply in natural settings, and the costs of ejaculate production and energetic courtship may be cumulative, such that males might experience increased nutritional demands only after multiple matings. In this study we tested this prediction by measuring the effect of multiple matings on the diet choice of male D. melanogaster fruit flies. Males were assigned to one of three mating treatments, unmated, mated once or mated five times consecutively, and then allowed to feed freely on chemically defined diets of protein and carbohydrate. In contrast to the prediction, we found that males that mated five times did not alter the amount of food, or the proportion of protein and carbohydrate consumed, when compared with unmated or once-mated males. This absence of a feeding response occurred despite substantial ejaculate depletion from multiple matings: males sired fewer offspring in each consecutive mating. These results reveal a lack of plasticity in male feeding behaviour according to mating status, despite substantial potential physiological costs, and highlight the remarkably distinct nutritional ecologies of males versus females.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability Statement: All data used for this study are available at https://figshare.com/s/2b0375af6fda5bf5a49e. Funding Information: This work was supported by a UK NERC PhD studentship held by M.C.S. within the ARIES Doctoral Training Partnership (NE/S007334/1), NERC grant (NE/P017193/1) and NSERC (RGPIN-2023-05981) held by J.C.P. and NERC grant (NE/R000891/1) and BBSRC grant (BB/W005174/1) held by T.C.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	27 Feb 2025 12:30
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2025 17:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98618
DOI:	10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.05.010

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