Search orientation of Musca domestica in patches of sucrose drops

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The searching tactics of the housefly, Musca dormestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae), have been delineated from digitized pathways of flies walking in patches of sucrose drops arranged in linear (ROW) and hexagonal (HEX) arrays.The areas covered by flies in ROW and HEX patches are distinctly different, but flies seem not to employ different tactics for the two types of resource arrays. The number of drops located, if at least one drop is found, does not differ between ROW and HEX.Most quantitative measures of local search remain constant after the first interdrop interval, although feeding time decreases as flies sample successive drops. Local search intensifies after each drop is ingested, with locomotory rate decreasing and turning rate increasing, followed by decay of both measures toward ranging levels.Searching can be characterized by two movement tendencies resulting from specific, definable, locomotory functions: a forward‐moving tendency is expressed by the fly as it leaves a resource in approximately the same direction as it arrives; and local search is characterized by looping, rather than straight walking, with a variable turning rate that generates a rough ‘zigzag’ superimposed on looping. The two movement tendencies, combined, allow flies to locate resources in a linear arrangement, because of the forward‐moving tendency, and to locate resources not arranged in a linear array because of the ‘noisy’ loop.M. domestica does not appear to retain and use information gained from one patch of drops in another, so the search tactic of the fly seems therefore to be a compromise between straight movement and circular movement that may be adaptive for an environment subject to frequent changes in the spatial distribution of resources.Giving‐up‐time, the period between ingesting the last drop and leaving the patch, is a function of the rate of change in the transition from local search to ranging, which is constant in our experiments. If a fly does not encounter another drop while ranging, during which it walks relatively straight, the fly moves out of and away from the patch.