Individual late-life fecundity plateaus do exist in Drosophila melanogaster and are very common at old age

Several authors have discussed the existence of late-life fecundity plateaus in Drosophila melanogaster. However, all these studies have pooled flies to show such plateaus. Here, we have reanalyzed previously published fecundity results to know whether these plateaus exist at the individual level. We found that these plateaus are observed in ca 20% of females and in more than 50% if only the longer-lived flies are taken into account. We conclude that late-life fecundity plateaus are not a rare phenomenon when considering a whole cohort of flies and are very common in oldest flies.