Male flies produce a chemical that makes females sleep in after mating

The person is Christa Lesté-Lasserre.

Male fruit flies are unable to mate with other males because they make females sleep later.

The male's sex organ is passed along to the female's body, making her less receptive to other males. According to a new study by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina, it also interfered with the biological clock mechanism that wakes up fruit flies before sunrise.

She says that the loss of anticipation could lead to sleeping when males are most active.

Fruit flies wake up an hour or two before the sun rises or the lights are turned on, according to previous studies. Franco and her colleagues realized that the studies were focused on males.

Because females are often overlooked in fruit fly research, they decided to use webcams to monitor the activity of virgin and just-mated female fruit flies. They compared a group of men.

The researchers were surprised that the only females that could still anticipate the morning were the virgins, and they slept until they woke up. The morning anticipation feature is completely suppressed in females who are married to each other.

Read more: Male fruit flies feel pleasure when they ejaculate

The researchers silenced certain groups of neurons in the reproductive tracts of females who had sex with another person. The females were able to wake up before dawn.

The female's nervous systems were tracked using fluorescent tracers. The sexpeptide appears to set off a chain of events from the reproductive system to the brain affecting structures that control the insects internal clock.

Female flies can mate with a lot of males. Producing chemicals that change their behavior is a way for males to increase their chances of success. The male is trying to keep other sperm from competing with his own in the female.

There is a journal reference in the field of genetics.