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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Measuring and Altering Mating Drive in Male Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: February 15, 2017
Sexual selection and the brain
1Dept of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Abstract:
Sex differences are intrinsically interesting, particularly in the brain. When sexually dimorphic structures mediate learning, and when such learning ability is necessary to compete for mates, then such differences are best understood within the framework of sexual selection. By categorizing recent studies of sex differences in the brain by their role in mate competition, theories of sexual selection can be used to predict and characterize the occurrence of dimorphisms among species with different mating systems.
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