Drosophila melanogaster females change mating behavior and offspring production based on social context
This work was spear-headed by PDF Jean-Christophe Billeter, with contributions from MSc student Samyukta Jagadeesh, undergraduate student Nancy Stepek and technician Reza Azanchi. Their paper was just published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They show that social context in flies, in terms of the genetic relatedness of males and females, affects reproductive behavior and offspring genetic diversity. They further show that these results are driven by female olfaction and behavior not male-male interactions. Overall these results illustrate how social environment might affect evolutionary processes.