Tanya Lewis,
LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 11 April
2013 Time: 02:08 PM ET
Female Ulidiid
flies have a kinky habit: After mating with a male, they expel his sperm and
eat it.
The odd
behavior may help these lady flies choose which guy flies will father their
young, researchers reported online today (April 11) in the journal Behavioral
Ecology and Sociobiology.
Studying a
species of "picture-winged fly," known as Euxesta bilimeki,
researchers found that 100 percent of the 74 fly couples they studied spewed
out ejaculate after mating. Further study revealed that 25 percent of females
harbored no sperm afterward.
The findings suggest the fly dames were able to control how much sperm to expel
in order to select which males fertilized their eggs.
And
these fly
gals are no romantics — long periods of courtship before mating made
females more likely to expel all the ejaculate, results showed. The researchers
suggest that the female may simply be giving in to a determined male in order
to stave off future advances, but dispensing with his sperm before he can
father her babies.
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