When a Drosophila male encounters a female, he uses wing vibrations to entice his potential mating partner. Courtship wing song is a highly structured, species specific acoustic signal. It stimulates the receptivity of a virgin female and drives her to accept males for copulation. Although largely innate, male singing behaviour is not a rigid reflex, but is modulated by multiple external and internal factors, such as physiological state, behavioural context and social experience.
Recently, we discovered that not only males, but also females produce acoustic signals during reproduction. In contrast to males, females do not sing during courtship, but only during copulation (which lasts around 20min). Interestingly, female song depends on the receipt of seminal fluid. The proximate and ultimate causes of this new female behavior are not yet completely understood. 
In the laboratory, we use high throughput audio recording of courtship song as a way to precisely quantify motor behavior at millisecond resolution. From the oscillogram, changes in wing movements can be detected with high temporal and spatial resolution, allowing for both efficient screening of large number of genotypes and sensitive, in depth analysis of a broad variety of phenotypes.