Vol. 51 No. 1, 2012

Offspring of Older Males are Superior in Drosophila bipectinata

Mysore S. Krishna*, Hassan T. Santhosh, and Shridhar N. Hegde

Drosophila Stock Center, Department of Studies in Zoology, Univ. of Mysore, Manasagangotri, Mysore 560 006, Karnataka, India

Mysore S. Krishna*, Hassan T. Santhosh, and Shridhar N. Hegde (2012) Drosophila bipectinata offspring of old- and youngaged males reared in low (LLD) and high larval densities (HLD) were employed to test a good gene model of female preference for male age classes. It was noted that with both LLD and HLD, offspring of old-aged male had significantly greater pre-adult fitness (egg-larval hatchability and larval-adult viability) and adult fitness (son’s mating success, mating latency, mating ability, progeny production, and longevity, and daughter’s mating success, fecundity, and longevity) over sons of young-aged males, which suggested that larval density did not have an effect on the inheritance of characters from parent to offspring. Among larval densities, LLD offspring performed significantly better in all traits studied than did HLD offspring. Thus, D. bipectinata females prefer oldaged males to obtain greater fitness benefits for their offspring, thereby confirming the good-gene model.

Key words: Female preference, Male age, Pre-adult fitness, Adult fitness.

*Correspondence: E-mail:drosokrish@gmail.com