Fruit flies sing during sex, and their songs are surprisingly distinct from courtship

Cultures · Published 10 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: While male fruit flies are famous for their pre-copulatory courtship songs, researchers have discovered that females also sing during mating. These pulsed wing vibrations are acoustically unique, controlled by sex-specific neurons, and appear to be an evolutionarily conserved behavior that helps modulate reproductive competition and future mating decisions.

In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the male courtship song is a well-studied behavior involving wing vibration. However, recent research reveals that females also produce a distinct song while in copula. Unlike the male's pre-copulatory song, which serves to increase the probability of mating, the female copulation song is produced by bilateral wing vibrations that coincide with specific sound pulses. These pulses are acoustically different from the male's song, featuring a higher fundamental frequency and longer intervals between pulses.

This behavior is not limited to a single species; it has been observed in close relatives, including D. simulans, D. mauritiana, and D. sechellia, suggesting it is an evolutionarily conserved trait. While the frequency of this song varies between species—occurring in 97.5% of D. melanogaster copulations compared to 28.1% in D. mauritiana—the acoustic parameters remain consistent across the melanogaster group. The song typically occurs throughout the 15 to 20 minutes of copulation, with the highest probability of occurrence at the very beginning and end of the act.

The function of this female song is linked to the male's seminal fluid. Research indicates that the transfer of these fluids during mating decreases a female's propensity to remate. By singing during copulation, females may be modulating their post-mating physiology and behavior in a context-dependent manner. When researchers clipped the wings of females, the copulation sound pulses were completely abolished, confirming that the females themselves are the source of this acoustic display. This discovery provides a new model for understanding how multimodal communication influences innate drives and reproductive outcomes in social groups.

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