Abstract

Neighboring resources can affect insect oviposition behavior when the complexity of sensory information obscures information about host resource availability in heterogeneous resource patches. These effects are referred to as associational effects and are hypothesized to occur through constraints in the sensory processing of the insect during host search, resulting into suboptimal resource use. Because the possibilities to study these constraints on naturally occurring animals are limited, we instead used sensory mutants of Drosophila melanogaster to determine the importance of sensory information in the occurrence of associational effects. We found that oviposition was mainly governed by non-volatile chemical cues and less by volatile cues. Moreover, the loss of gustatory sensilla resulted in random resource selection and eliminated associational effects. In conclusion, our study shows that associational effects do not necessarily depend on constraints in the sensory evaluation of resource quality, but may instead be a direct consequence of distinctive selection behavior between different resources at small scales.

Published in

Scientific Reports
2017, Volume: 7, article number: 9352

SLU Authors

• Anderson, Peter

  • Department of Plant Protection Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Behavioral Sciences Biology
Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09728-7

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/86208