Courtship behavior and the kinetics of mating in three lines of Drosophila simulans and their hybrids

Mating in Drosophila is precisely characterized by an exponential phase on second-order kinetics coupled with an initial lag phase based on zeroth-order kinetics. In this model, the two separate kinetic phases are quantified by separate parameters. Three genetically distinct lines of Drosophila simulans differing in male and female mating propensities (measured by the relative frequencies of animals mating after a fixed interval of time) also differed sharply in both parameters of mating kinetics. One line was highly outcrossed and the other two, derivatives of the first, had been subjected to genetic drift. The lines and their F sub(1) hybrids were studied in "no-choice" mating tests with a "control line" to determine the two parameters describing mating kinetics and were observed in pair matings to measure four courtship traits.