The influence of developmental environment on courtship song in cactophilic Drosophila

Closely related species often differ in the signals involved in sexual communication and mate recognition. Determining the factors influencing signal quality (i.e. signal's content and conspicuousness) provides an important insight into the potential pathways by which these interspecific differences evolve. Host specificity could bias the direction of the evolution of sexual communication and the mate recognition system, favouring sensory channels that work best in the different host conditions. In this study, we focus on the cactophilic sibling species Drosophila buzzatii and D. koepferae that have diverged not only in the sensory channel used for sexual communication and mate recognition but also in the cactus species that use as primary hosts. We evaluate the role of the developmental environment in generating courtship song variation using an isofemale line design. Our results show that host environment during development induces changes in the courtship song of D. koepferae males, but not in D. buzzatii males. Moreover, we report for the first time that host rearing environment affects the conspicuousness of courtship song (i.e. song volume). Our results are mainly discussed in the context of the sensory drive hypothesis.