MALE MATING SUCCESS: Preference or Prowess? Investigating Sexual Selection in the Laboratory Using Drosophila melanogaster

From: The American Biology Teacher | Date: August 1, 2007| Author: | Copyright information

Sexual selection is a major force in evolutionary biology and explains many of the widespread phenotypic characters, such as bright colors, melodious songs, and elaborate behavioral displays that fascinate biologists and non-biologists alike. It is therefore surprising that sexual selection receives so little attention in introductory biology laboratories (however, see Eason &r Sherman, 2003). Here we describe a set of experiments investigating sexual selection in the fruit fly, Drosophila mehnogaster, that require students to formulate hypotheses, conduct behavioral assays, employ basic ...

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