Bath Eleanor, Bowden Samuel, Peters Carla, Reddy Anjali, Tobias Joseph A, Easton-Calabria Evan, Seddon Nathalie, Goodwin Stephen F, Wigby Stuart
Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK OX1 3PS.
Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College, London, UK SW7 2AZ.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2017 Jun;1(6):0154. doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0154. Epub 2017 May 15.
Female aggression towards other females is associated with reproduction in many taxa, and traditionally thought to be related to the protection or provisioning of offspring, such as through increased resource acquisition. However, the underlying reproductive factors causing aggressive behaviour in females remain unknown. Here we show that female aggression in the fruit fly is strongly stimulated by the receipt of sperm at mating, and in part by an associated seminal fluid protein, the sex peptide. We further show that the post-mating increase in female aggression is decoupled from the costs of egg production and from post-mating decreases in sexual receptivity. Our results suggest that male ejaculates can have a surprisingly direct influence on aggression in recipient females. Male ejaculate traits thus influence the female social competitive environment with potentially far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences.
在许多生物分类群中，雌性对其他雌性的攻击行为与繁殖有关，传统上认为这与后代的保护或养育有关，比如通过增加资源获取。然而，导致雌性攻击行为的潜在生殖因素仍然未知。在此，我们表明果蝇中的雌性攻击行为在交配时因接受精子而受到强烈刺激，部分原因是一种相关的精液蛋白——性肽。我们进一步表明，交配后雌性攻击性的增加与产卵成本以及交配后性接受能力的下降无关。我们的结果表明，雄性射精对接受精子的雌性的攻击性可能有惊人的直接影响。因此，雄性射精特征会影响雌性的社会竞争环境，可能产生深远的生态和进化后果。
