Mate Competition Drives Aggressive Behaviour in Female Drosophila

Abstract

Aggression is an adaptive set of behaviours that allows animals to compete against one another in an environment of limited resources. In Drosophila such aggressive behaviour has been extensively studied in males. Despite recent work highlighting territorial defence in females, female aggression in Drosophila is still poorly understood. Indeed, whether females compete for mating partners, as males do, has remained unknown so far. In the present work, we report that Drosophila melanogaster females reliably display aggression towards mating pairs. This aggressive behaviour is positively associated with the female's mating drive and relies heavily on olfaction. Furthermore, we found that food odour in combination with OR47b-dependent fly odour sensing are required for proper expression of aggressive behaviour. Taken together, we describe a social context linked to reproduction in which Drosophila females aspiring to mate produce consistent and stereotyped displays of aggression. These findings open the door for further inquiries into the neural mechanisms that govern this behaviour.