Abstract
Laboratory studies have revealed a significant “cost of mating” to Drosophila melanogaster females in the form of reduced longevity. The effect is attributable to nonsperm components of the ejaculate. Female D. melanogaster are known to mate up to six times in nature, and given that they do not typically remate daily, it raises the question as to the extent to which the longevity of wild mated females is reduced. Here I addressed this question by comparing the longevity of wild virgin females, collected as they emerged from rotting fruit, to the longevity of randomly collected mature females at the same site. Because the randomly collected females all were inseminated and were fully pigmented at the time of collection, they already were older than the virgins when the experiment began. Contrary to expectations from laboratory studies, the older, mated females lived significantly longer than the virgins. Rather than a “cost of mating,” there appears to be a “cost of virginity” to female D. melanogaster in the wild.
Highlights
Reduction in life span of female Drosophila melanogaster is associated with mating (Fowler and Partridge 1989; Rice 1996; Pitnick and Garcia–Gonzalez 2002; Markow and O’Grady 2005)
If mating reduces female life span, how do mated females in nature live sufficiently long to remate multiple times? At present, no data exist regarding how long females collected from nature live, but in the laboratory, the lifeshortening effects of mating are observed within a few days (Fowler and Partridge 1989; Chapman et al 1995; Wigby and Chapman 2005)
There were 19 virgin and 26 mated females and the mated females lived an average of approximately 6 days longer
Summary
Reduction in life span of female Drosophila melanogaster is associated with mating (Fowler and Partridge 1989; Rice 1996; Pitnick and Garcia–Gonzalez 2002; Markow and O’Grady 2005). Having remated three or four times, as evidenced by molecular studies of paternity (Imhof et al 1998), females collected at random in nature would have received one or more doses of “life-shortening” seminal substances as well as sperm and would on average be several days older than newly emerging virgin females.
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