Air pollution is causing decline in mating of fruit flies, study reveals

A new study has revealed that air pollution is creating a hindrance in the mating of fruit flies because females are unable to recognise the males' scent.

Female fruit flies use the scent of pheromones which is emitted by males to select them for mating, however, ozone pollution has disrupted the ability of males to emit their characteristic odour, researchers stated.

The study reflects how contaminated air is becoming a hindrance in the reproduction of fruit flies and other insects, and may lead to a decline in population.

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“Everyone knows that we are facing insect decline, and so far the reason was pesticide use and habitat loss. But we think that we should also consider oxygen pollutants,” said Markus Knaden, who is an evolutionary neuroethology researcher at the Max Planck Institute as well as the study's lead author, which was published in the journal Nature Communications.

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This study is based on how the smell of the flower is perceived differently by the insects when they are exposed to elevated levels of ozone.

The team of Knaden tested Drosophila fruit flies' nine different species by exposing half the males from every species to clean air and the other half to an atmosphere in which ozone levels are at 100 parts per billion.

The scientists discovered that the males kept in the atmosphere with higher ozone levels began emitting lesser pheromones and faced trouble in attracting female partners.

“When we expose male flies to ozone, then suddenly it took them much longer to convince the female to mate,” Knaden said.

“What’s more, emitting pheromones also helps males fend off other males from trying to reproduce with them. But being exposed to ozone led to males smelling less like males, and a rise in the number of attempts to mate between males,” he added.

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“In the lab, it doesn’t matter whether the male has to wait one or two minutes longer to mate, or whether the male accidentally courts another male. But in the field, there is a lot of selection pressure and the flies have to be efficient, so they have to give everything to find the female as soon as possible, copulate and fertilise her eggs before they’re killed by a predator,” the researcher further stated.

Knaden said that nature will be hugely affected by this as ozone is just one among the different pollutants present in the environment which can do this.

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