Metabolic pathways that mediate the effects of food deprivation on reproductive behavior in female Drosophila melanogaster

In most species studied, energy deficits inhibit female reproductive behavior, but the location and nature of energy sensors and how they affect behavior are unknown. Progress has been facilitated by using Drosophila melanogaster, a species in which reproduction and food availability are closely linked. Adult males and females were either fed or food deprived (FD) and then tested in an arena with a fed, opposite-sex conspecific with no food in the testing arena. Only FD females (not FD males) significantly decreased their copulation rate and increased their copulation latency, and the effects of FD were prevented in females fed either yeast alone or glucose alone, but not sucralose alone, cholesterol alone, or amino acids alone. It is well-known that high-fat diets inhibit copulation rate in this species, and the effects of FD on copulation rate were mimicked by treatment with an inhibitor of glucose but not free fatty acid oxidation. The availability of oxidizable glucose was a necessary condition for copulation rate in females fed either yeast alone or fed a nutritive fly medium, which suggests that the critical component of yeast for female copulation rate is oxidizable glucose. Thus, female copulation rate in D. melanogaster is sensitive to the availability of oxidizable metabolic fuels, particularly the availability of oxidizable glucose or substrates/byproducts of glycolysis.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Copulation rate was decreased in food-deprived female but not in male adults when tested without food in the testing arena. Copulation rate was 1) maintained by feeding glucose alone, yeast alone, nutritive medium lacking yeast, but not sucralose, amino acids, or cholesterol alone; 2) decreased by inhibition of glycolysis in females fed either nutritive medium or yeast alone; and 3) not affected by inhibition of fatty acid oxidation. Thus, female copulation rate was linked to glycolytic status.