UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Social and physical environment independently affect oviposition decisions in Drosophila

Churchill, ER; Dytham, C; Bridle, JR; Thom, MDF; (2021) Social and physical environment independently affect oviposition decisions in Drosophila. Behavioral Ecology , 32 (6) pp. 1391-1399. 10.1093/beheco/arab105. Green open access

[thumbnail of Churchill et al 2021 Behavioural Ecology.pdf]
Preview
Text
Churchill et al 2021 Behavioural Ecology.pdf - Published Version

Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

In response to environmental stimuli, including variation in the presence of conspecifics, genotypes show highly plastic responses in behavioral and physiological traits influencing reproduction. Although extensively documented in males, such female responses are rather less studied. We expect females to be highly responsive to environmental variation and to differentially allocate resources to increase offspring fitness, given the major contribution of mothers to offspring number, size, and developmental conditions. Using Drosophila melanogaster, we (a) manipulate exposure to conspecific females, which mothers could use to anticipate the number of potential mates and larval density, and; (b) test how this interacts with the spatial distribution of potential oviposition sites, with females from higher densities expected to prefer clustered resources that can support a larger number of larvae. We found that high density females were slower to start copulating and reduced their copulation duration, the opposite effect to that observed in males. There was a parallel, perhaps related, effect on egg production: females previously housed in groups laid fewer eggs than those housed in solitude. Resource patchiness also influenced oviposition behavior: females preferred aggregated substrate, which attracted more females to lay eggs. However, we found no interaction between prior housing conditions and resource patchiness, indicating that females did not perceive the value of different resource distributions differently when exposed to environments that could signal expected levels of larval competition. We show that, although exposure to consexual competition changes copulatory behaviors of females, the distribution of oviposition resources has a greater effect on oviposition decisions.

Type: Article
Title: Social and physical environment independently affect oviposition decisions in Drosophila
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arab105
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arab105
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Drosophila melanogaster, competition, copulation, density, egg laying, mating duration, patchiness, resource distribution
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10141080
Downloads since deposit
46Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item