Fighting female flesh flies: A study of behavioral ontogeny in the flesh fly Sarcophaga crassipalpis

Many organisms show a difference in behavior based upon sex. The flesh fly Sarcophaga crassipalpis is one such organism in which the male displays territorial tendencies whereas the female don’t (Paquette et al 2008). Furthermore, it is the male fly which initiates and drives the act of mating after reaching sexual maturity at day 3 after eclosion (manuscript in preparation). The behavioral patterns and ontogeny of behavior have been studied in pairs of naive male flesh flies placed in an arena together (Paquette et al. 2008; manuscript in preparation). This study compares the differences in the behavioral patterns and ontogeny of behavior in female flesh flies to that of male flesh flies studied under the same conditions. We test the hypothesis that female flies will be less aggressive towards one another than male flies, since they do not display territorial tendencies. We also test the hypothesis that females will maintain a similar level of aggression throughout sexual maturation since they neither initiate nor drive mating; whereas, males become far more aggressive as they mature in order to mate successfully.