Researchers set up an experiment pairing female fruit flies with males that could not ejaculate.
A handout photo obtained from CSIRO on March 21, 2014 shows a Queensland fruit fly on a leaf.But a new study published Monday in the journal Neuron has shown that the sensation of copulating -- and not just insemination -- is responsible for female fruit flies temporarily losing interest in other partners.
They ended up finding, however, a pair of sensory neurons in the abdomen that were"female-specific" and which"likely transmit excitatory signals from abdominal sensory systems to the brain." So the researchers set up an experiment pairing the female fruit flies with males that could not ejaculate.After mating, the females lost interest in other males, even though they had not received any sperm. By contrast, when the neurons perceived as rewarding were blocked, the females kept trying to mate.
"The question of whether a successful mating has happened is very important in evolution," Heberlein told AFP."Females need to be able to tell whether they copulated successfully or not, else it makes a lot of sense to try to mate again.
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