Courtship strategies of male insects: when is learning advantageous?

Experiments indicating learning in the context of courtship in fruit flies challenge the prevailing views that male insects are either indiscriminate or rely on innate rules for courtship. We investigated the conditions favouring learning during courtship in insects by using a model that compared a learning strategy to two alternatives, indiscriminate courtship and innate selectivity. Our analyses indicated that, under the two conditions of high encounter rates with females and long courtship durations, indiscriminate courtship resulted in much lower lifetime mating success than either selectivity or learning. Learning had moderate advantages over selectivity when encounter rates with females were high, when a large proportion of females were sexually receptive, and when acceptance rates by sexually receptive females were high. We predict that species in which such conditions commonly occur are most likely to show learning in the context of male courtship. (c) 2006 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.