Individual differences in sensory responses influence decision making by Drosophila melanogaster larvae on exposure to contradictory cues

Abstract

Animals make decisions on behavioral choice by evaluating internal and external signals. Individuals often make decisions in different ways, but the underlying neural mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we describe a system for observing the behavior of individual Drosophila melanogaster larvae simultaneously presented with contradictory signals, in this case attractive (yeast paste) and aversive (NaCl) signals. Olfaction was used to detect the yeast paste, whereas the ENaC/Pickpocket channel was important for NaCl detection. We found that wild-type (Canton-S) larvae fall into two decision making groups: one group decided to approach the yeast paste by overcoming the aversive signal, whereas the other group decided to forgo the yeast paste because of the aversive signal. Our findings indicate that different endogenous sensitivities to NaCl contribute to make differences between two groups and that diverse decision making steps occur in individual animals.