Female Fruit Flies Love Flamboyant Males

Dazzling colors and flamboyant displays are a common way for males to get the girl in the animal kingdom, but did you know this goes for fruit flies too? The incredibly tiny and uniform insects actually have a hidden display that is all about the sheen of their wings. Males who boast a particularly psychedelic shine have been found to be far more likely to find a mate and reproduce within their short lifetime.

That's at least according to a new study recently published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS).

The study details how male fruit fly wings boast the hidden ability to reflect a rainbow of colors in the right light.

"Because the wings are transparent, these colours are only visible against a dark background", study author Jessica Abbott explained in a recent release.

Experts, who have long been studying the intriguing insects, are well aware that female fruit flies searched for the 'right man' before reproducing. However, because this colorful wing sheen is almost completely invisible to the human eye, they had often wondered what the selection motivation could be. Predictable traits, such as size or aggression did not seem to sway female preference.

However, for the current study researchers found that the thicker the male wing, the more unique reflective properties it had, launching a kaleidoscope of colors in the right light. After identifying this trait, they observed fruit flies in action, finding that females were indeed drawn to males with thick and shiny wings.

"Our experiment shows that this newly-discovered trait is important in female choice in fruit flies, and is the first evidence that wing interference patterns have a biological signaling function between the sexes during sexual selection," Abbot said.

Still, the researchers remain unsure what shiny wings could say about the genes or health of a male.

"Our results will hopefully stimulate more research on wing interference patterns in other species, and increase interest in the role that the light environment plays in mate choice," added researcher Erik Svensson.