Drosophila females trade off good nutrition with high quality oviposition sites when choosing foods

Abstract

Animals, from insects to humans, select foods to regulate their acquisition of key nutrients in amounts and balances that maximise fitness. In species in which the nutrition of juveniles depends on parents, adults must make challenging foraging decisions that simultaneously address their own nutrient needs as well as those of their progeny. Here, we examined how the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a species in which individuals eat and lay eggs in decaying fruits, integrate feeding decisions (individual nutrition) and oviposition decisions (offspring nutrition) when foraging. Using cafeteria assays with artificial diets varying in concentrations and ratios of protein to carbohydrates, we show that D. melanogaster females exhibit complex foraging patterns, alternating between laying eggs on high carbohydrate foods and feeding on foods with different nutrient contents depending on their own nutritional state. Although larvae showed faster development on high protein foods, both survival and learning performance were higher on balanced foods. We suggest that the apparent mismatch between the oviposition preference of females for high carbohydrate foods and the high performances of larvae on balanced foods reflects a natural situation where high carbohydrate ripened fruits gradually enrich in proteinaceous yeast as they start rotting, thereby yielding optimal nutrition for the developing larvae. Our findings that animals with rudimentary parental care uncouple feeding and egg-laying decisions in order to balance their own diet and provide a nutritionally optimal environment to their progeny reveal unsuspected levels of complexity in the nutritional ecology of parent-offspring interactions.

A clinal polymorphism in the insulin signaling transcription factorfoxocontributes to life‐history adaptation inDrosophila*

“…,b; Lee and Jang ; Lihoreau et al. ; Mathur and Schmidt ), yet we found very little evidence for allele by environment (G × E) interactions.…”

“…With respect to dietary effects, higher P:C ratios, for instance, might be expected to cause increased viability, larger size but reduced starvation resistance (Lee and Jang ; Lihoreau et al. ; Reis ). In terms of G × E, genotypes from temperate, seasonal HL habitats might be more plastic than those from LL habitats (Overgaard et al.…”

Fitness traits of Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae) after long-term laboratory rearing on different diets

“…Quality and amount of nutritive resources, as well as the balance of macronutrients in food, have a strong effect on the life-history traits of D. melanogaster (Lee et al, 2008;Kolss et al, 2009;Kristensen et al, 2011;Schwarz et al, 2014;May et al, 2015;Rodrigues et al, 2015;Simpson et al, 2015;AbedVieillard & Cortot, 2016). Nutritive demands may change during the course of life and may be sex-specifi c, if the sexes maximize fi tness in different ways (Lee et al, 2008;Maklakov et al, 2008;Lihoreau et al, 2016).…”

Nutritional geometry and fitness consequences in Drosophila suzukii, the Spotted‐Wing Drosophila

“…and Raubenheimer () in which two variables (in our case, protein and carbohydrates) are experimentally manipulated across a “landscape.” Previous nutritional geometry studies show that both protein and carbohydrate availability is strongly associated with variation in foraging behavior, oviposition rate, development, reproduction, and longevity in a number of different insect species (e.g., Jensen et al., ; Lee et al., ; Lihoreau et al., ; Maklakov et al., ; Morimoto & Wigby, ; Reddiex et al., ; Rodrigues et al., ). For instance, while hissing cockroach females, Gromphadorhina portentosa , prefer to feed on relatively high‐protein foods (Carrel & Tanner, ), female D. melanogaster instead prefer foods with relatively higher carbohydrates, as sites for both their feeding and egg laying (Lihoreau et al., ; Rodrigues et al., ). A female's decision where to oviposit is also potentially important to the success of her offspring (e.g., Anderson et al., ; Morimoto & Wigby, ; Rodrigues et al., ) since the characteristics of the natal diet during development influence numerous fitness‐related traits.…”