Single-Pair Courtship and Competition Assays in Drosophila
- 1Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience (DANDRITE), Nordic-EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
- 2The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, The Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center and the Nanotechnology Institute, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel
- 3School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
- ↵5Correspondence: galit.ophir{at}biu.ac.il; c.rezaval{at}bham.ac.uk
Abstract
Courtship in Drosophila melanogaster involves a series of innate, complex behaviors that allow male and female flies to exchange sensory information and assess the quality of a potential mate. Although highly robust and stereotypical, courtship behaviors can be modulated by internal state and experience. This protocol describes methods for designing and carrying out experiments that measure courtship performance in single-pair assays, in which a male is paired with a female, or in competitive assays, in which a male is presented with a female and with a male competitor. It also includes approaches for measuring female sexual receptivity during courtship.
Footnotes
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↵4 Present address: Department of Medicine, Faculty of Science, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland
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From the Drosophila Neurobiology collection, edited by Bing Zhang, Ellie Heckscher, Alex C. Keene, and Scott Waddell.
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Supplemental material is available at cshprotocols.cshlp.org.
