Abstract
Individuals can make choices based on information learned from others, a phenomenon called social learning. How observers differentiate between which individual they should or should not learn from is, however, poorly understood. Here, we showed that Drosophila melanogaster females can influence the choice of egg-laying site of other females through pheromonal marking. Mated females mark territories of high quality food by ejecting surplus male sperm containing the aggregation pheromone cis-11-vaccenyl acetate (cVA) and, in addition, deposit several sex- and species-specific cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) pheromones. These pheromonal cues affect the choices of other females, which respond by preferentially laying eggs on the marked food. This system benefits both senders and responders, as communal egg laying increases offspring survival. Virgin females, however, do not elicit a change in the egg-laying decision of mated females, even when food has been supplemented with ejected sperm from mated females, thus indicating the necessity for additional cues. Genetic ablation of either a female’s CHC pheromones or those of their mate results in loss of ability of mated females to attract other females. We conclude that mated females use a pheromonal marking system, comprising cVA acquired from male ejaculate with sex- and species-specific CHCs produced by both mates, to indicate egg-laying sites. This system ensures information reliability because mated, but not virgin, females have both the ability to generate the pheromone blend that attracts other flies to those sites and a direct interest in egg-laying site quality.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10886-016-0681-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Selecting an appropriate egg-laying site is crucial to oviparous females, as the quality of a site will determine their offspring’s chance of survival
Because fruit flies aggregate on food through an aggregation pheromone, cis-11-vaccenyl acetate, found in males and mated females (Bartelt et al 1985; Wertheim et al 2002b), we explored how flies communicate about communal egg-laying sites through chemical cues
Naïve Females Learn about Egg–laying Sites through Cues Left by Mated Females In order to study social transfer of information about egg-laying sites, we developed an assay in which a BSender^ fly was forced to occupy one of two egglaying patches of identical nutritional quality placed in the same dish (Fig. 1a)
Summary
Selecting an appropriate egg-laying site is crucial to oviparous females, as the quality of a site will determine their offspring’s chance of survival. The selection of egg-laying sites by Drosophila melanogaster females is a good behavior for studying the basic mechanisms of social learning. Female fruit flies use physical environmental cues to select individual egg-laying sites (Gou et al 2014; Joseph et al 2009; Laturney and Billeter 2014; Yang et al 2008), they can use social information. Females can choose egglaying sites by observing a demonstrator female laying eggs on a food patch (Sarin and Dukas 2009), through direct social interaction with an experienced female that communicates which site to choose (Battesti et al 2012), or through chemical cues left behind by sender flies that function as a public source of information for responders (Lin et al 2015; Wertheim et al 2002a).
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