The influence of diet on ovarian maturation, mating, and pheromone production in the housefly,Musca domestica

Abstract

Summary The old ‘Orlando Regular’ strain of houseflies survived equally well on both the sucrose diet or the control, protein containing diet. However, the majority of flies maintained on sucrose did not develop their eggs past stage 4, early yolk deposition. About 20% of the population from the old strain were partially or completely autogenous and autogeny was completely expressed by 5 days on the sucrose diet. The new strain was essentially anautogenous and none developed mature eggs by 6 days after emergence, but 7% were partially autogenous. The frequency of mating, for both males and females from the old strain, was depressed by 10% for insects fed only sucrose but was depressed by 40% in sucrose fed females from the new strain. The amount of the sex pheromone, Z-(9)-tricosene, on the surface lipids was not affected by diet but the amount in the internal lipids was significantly reduced by the sucrose diet. The amount of Z-(9)-heptacosene was significantly higher in the sucrose fed flies than in the controls. Furthermore, diet did not have an effect on female attractiveness to males in olfactometer assays. Alllatectomy of sucrose fed flies within 8 hours of emergence mat were placed on the control diet from day 4 to day 6 depressed mating and stopped ovarian maturation at stage 4. Flies that were held on sucrose for 2 days, allatectomized, and then fed the control diet for 4 days, developed mature ovaries in most cases, and mated at control levels, but the majority of those that had the corpus allatum—cardiacum complex removed did not develop ovaries past stage 4 and had depressed mating. We concluded that diet did not influence corpus allatum function but it affected corpus cardiacum function and that both ovarian development and the complete expression of mating receptivity, required the corpus allatum and the corpus cardiacum.