An assessment of sperm survival in Drosophila melanogaster

Recently published evidence based on cytological staining indicates that sperm die rapidly after being stored in female Drosophila melanogaster. However, measuring sperm death in this way has a potential artifact: the death of sperm owing to the extraction, mounting, and staining of sperm. Here we use a protocol that bypasses all of these potential extraneous mortality factors to test the hypothesis that there is high mortality of stored sperm in D. melanograster. Contrary to the findings from cytological staining, our data indicates that mortality of stored sperm is quite low.