Although courtship and starvation resistance are under stringent evolutionary pressure, the relationship between these traits has been difficult to investigate experimentally. Interactions between fitness and courtship have been documented in diverse species where both male and female flies display preference for mates with improved fitness characteristics that include body size, ornamental displays and pheromonal profiles. We have generated three replicated lines of starvation resistant flies by selecting for survival on a non-caloric agar diet and were then compared to three replicated populations of fed control flies. S flies live up to 18 days without food compared to the ~4 days for F flies. Starvation resistant flies display a number of behavioral and physiological changes including reduced fecundity, suggesting a trade-off between starvation resistance and reproduction. Here we characterize the courtship behaviors of male and female flies selected for starvation resistance. While courtship duration, courtship latency, song quality and quantity does not differ between starvation resistant flies and controls, the starvation resistant flies displayed dramatically reduced copulation success. Analysis of courtship in mixed pairings revealed both male and female contributions to reduced copulation in starvation resistant flies, raising the possibility of a functional trade-off between starvation resistance and copulation efficiency. While non-selected control flies outperform starvation resistant flies in competition assays under fed conditions, the result is reversed when flies are fasted prior testing. Taken together, these findings indicate that selection for starvation resistance results in genetic changes that impair copulation without affecting courtship duration and provide an adaptive copulation advantage in the absence of food.