One of the most consequential decisions that organisms make is whether to mate or not, and how to identify appropriate mates. Both sexes of Drosophila perform a variety of complex and sex-specific mating behaviors, but it is ultimately the female that decides whether copulation will occur. This makes female receptivity behavior and male courtship an important model to understand complex sexual behaviors. We use Drosophila to understand the genetic and neural basis of these behaviors.

In many plants and animals, individuals can alter which sperm they use to fertilize embryos because they have specific organs that store gametes or require gametes to traverse the reproductive tract. Individuals can mate with multiple males. This leads to co-evolution of male and female reproductive traits and structures that can be important to speciation and divergence.