Abstract
Digital signal processing methods have revealed spectral components inDrosophila melanogaster's andD. simulans' male courtship songs that had gone undetected in previous studies. We found that a bout of courtship hum (“sine song”) inD. simulans typically consists of a narrowband fundamental frequency, accompanied by second and third harmonics that can comprise a major fraction of the power in the signal. The pulse song spectra consisted of single broad-band peaks of highly variable frequencies, which, nevertheless, are characteristically different in these two species. Genetic elements of the newly discovered song components were examined by analysis of theD. melanogaster/D. simulans hybrid. Such males were found to be intermediate in production of sine song harmonics as well as in other parameters of courtship song, except for sine song and intrapulse frequency bandwidths, for which there may be dominant factors inD. simulans.