Birth temperature followed by a visual critical period determines cooperative group membership

Williamson, M.; Mitchell, Alexandra; Condron, Barry

doi:10.1007/s00359-021-01512-3

Cited by 5 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…3c). In previous studies, such nonsynchronizing larvae did not stay long in clusters (Dombrovski et al 2017(Dombrovski et al , 2019Williamson et al 2021).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Population parameters of Drosophila larval cooperative foraging.

Liao,

Qian,

Abdi

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Cooperative foraging behavior can be advantageous when there is a common exploitable resource. By cooperating, members of the group can take advantage of the potential of increased efficiency of working together as well as equitable distribution of the product. An experimental signature of cooperative foraging is an Allee effect where at a certain number of individuals, there is a peak of fitness. What happens when there are intruders especially ones that do not contribute to any work required for foraging? Drosophila larvae secrete digestive enzymes and exodigest food. Under crowded conditions in liquid food these larvae form synchronized feeding clusters which provides a fitness benefit. A key for this synchronized feeding behavior is the visually guided alignment between adjacent larvae in a feeding cluster. Larvae who do not align their movements are excluded from the groups and subsequently lose the benefit. This may be a way of editing the group to include only known members. To test the model, the fitness benefit from cooperative behavior was further investigated to establish an Allee effect for a number of strains including those who cannot exodigest or cluster. In a standard lab vial, about 40 larvae is the optimal number for fitness. Combinations of these larvae were also examined. The expectation was that larvae who do not contribute to exodigestion are obligate cheaters and would be expelled. Indeed, obligate cheaters gain greatly from the hosts but paradoxically, so do the hosts. Clusters that include cheaters are more stable. Therefore, clustering and the benefits from it are dependent on more than just the contribution to exodigestion. This experimental system should provide a rich future model to understand the metrics of cooperative behavior.

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“…3c). In previous studies, such nonsynchronizing larvae did not stay long in clusters (Dombrovski et al 2017(Dombrovski et al , 2019Williamson et al 2021).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Population parameters of Drosophila larval cooperative foraging.

Liao,

Qian,

Abdi

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…the quality of the feeding niche built by the first settling species) and asymmetry between species may all be cue influencing larval behaviour. A recent study on Drosophila larvae has shown evidence for the existence of such complex aggregation mechanisms involving not only environmental factors but also life-history traits [40].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding the blowflies LS and CV, there is no doubt that larvae mix digestive enzymes and share processed food in a communal manner. The construction of such a feeding niche can thus reduce the development time of larvae and provide a fitness benefit to larvae regardless of their species identity, complying with the definition of mutualism [19,40,60–63]. However, LS and CV have different growth rates and final sizes: CV larvae grow slower and get bigger than LS [37].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, tiny variations in the balance of larval cues may have changed final aggregation outputs, leading to various unstable configurations [18,49,51,52]. Further, each individual larva may have slightly different life-history traits, physiological requirements [10,40] and even personality [47], resulting in different choices.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We observed interspecific trade-off suggesting mutualism, but did not measure fitness parameters evidencing such a shared benefit. Aggregation can be regarded as a form of cooperation if it is beneficial to the whole population [6,40,[53][54][55][56]. When two different species are involved, both must benefit from the interaction for it to be called mutualism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aggregation in an heterospecific population of blowfly larvae: social behaviour is impacted by species-specific thermal requirements and settlement order

Charabidzé

Aubernon

2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Larvae of several blowfly species grow on carcasses and actively aggregate together. They face harsh developmental conditions resulting in a strong pressure to reduce development time: this is achieved either through thermoregulation or aggregation. We investigate how these two developmental strategies are modulated within heterospecific groups. In a first experiment, larvae of two species with different thermal requirements were deposited simultaneously on a thermal gradient. This resulted in the formation of two monospecific groups, each located at the species-specific thermal preferendum. However, when Calliphora vomitoria (Linnaeus) larvae were placed first, the later arriving Lucilia sericata (Meigen) larvae attracted the whole group to its own thermal preferendum. In the reverse experiment, half of the replicates resulted in single dense heterospecific groups observed at temperatures ranging from C. vomitoria to L. sericata preferendum. The other half of the replicates resulted in loose groups spread out on the thermal gradient. These results highlight the emergence of collective decisions ranging from thermal optimization to heterospecific aggregation at suboptimal temperatures. They demonstrate that species settlement order strongly affects self-organization processes and mixed-species group formation. We conclude that thermal optimization and heterospecific niche construction are two developmental strategies of carrion fly larvae. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Mixed-species groups and aggregations: shaping ecological and behavioural patterns and processes’.

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