Abstract

The sexual receptivity of young virgin Drosophila melanogaster females develops between 24 and 48 hr from eclosion. Measurement of this process suggests that percentage receptivity (reflecting ‘switch-on’) and courtship duration (reflecting ‘courtship processing’) may not be controlled by entirely different processes. A decline in courtship duration was found to accompany the swtich-on of receptivity, suggesting that the settings in the courtship processing system are under the control of the same developmental process. Once a female has become sexually mature her courtship processing system is set to require certain quantities of courtship before acceptance occurs. This setting is stable, at least while the female is still virgin, and is correlated with a fundamental variable in the reproductive biology of the female, her fecundity.

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