Social Environment Influences Performance in a Cognitive Task in Natural Variants of the Foraging Gene

Abstract

In Drosophila melanogaster, natural genetic variation in the foraging gene affects the foraging behaviour of larval and adult flies, larval reward learning, adult visual learning, and adult aversive training tasks. Sitters (for s) are more sedentary and aggregate within food patches whereas rovers (forR) have greater movement within and between food patches, suggesting that these natural variants are likely to experience different social environments. We hypothesized that social context would differentially influence rover and sitter behaviour in a cognitive task. We measured adult rover and sitter performance in a classical olfactory training test in groups and alone. All flies were reared in groups, but fly training and testing were done alone and in groups. Sitters trained and tested in a group had significantly higher learning performances compared to sitters trained and tested alone. Rovers performed similarly when trained and tested alone and in a group. In other words, rovers learning ability is independent of group training and testing. This suggests that sitters may be more sensitive to the social context than rovers. These differences in learning performance can be altered by pharmacological manipulations of PKG activity levels, the foraging (for) gene's gene product. Learning and memory is also affected by the type of social interaction (being in a group of the same strain or in a group of a different strain) in rovers, but not in sitters. These results suggest that for mediates social learning and memory in D. melanogaster.

Effect of bisphenol A on Drosophila melanogaster behavior – A new model for the studies on neurodevelopmental disorders

“…It is also a common feature in studies using mouse models [66]. Social behavior is the ability of conspecifics to interact, leading to changes in the subsequent behaviors of the individual [67][68][69]. In a social setting, the individual maintains a personal space or a distance from another individual (personal space boundary), but also a spatial proximity to another individual for effective communication [70].…”

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“…If rover flies were sequentially conditioned to associate two different odors with an aversive stimulus, they showed strong memory retention for the last experienced odor but poor memory for the first, whereas sitter flies remembered both odors equally well [24]. The foraging allele even determines whether or not flies use social learning [25,26]. Both in an olfactory and a spatial learning task, sitter flies perform better when conditioned and tested in a group than alone, whereas this difference was not present for rover flies.…”

“…Again this may be an adaptation to the more aggregated behavior of sitter flies, versus the more explorative, solitary behavior of rover flies. Using specific PKG inhibitors or activators, these differences could be correlated to PKG activity levels [25].…”

“…Within the behavioral repertoire of individual insects, there is plasticity in the learning and memory type, for instance depending on the host species of parasitic wasp involved [35]. At the population level, there is genetic variation in prepared learning associated with foraging behavior, linked to the foraging gene [22,[24][25][26], or due to genetic variation as for example in prepared learning of visual and olfactory cues [15]. Finally, between species there exists variation due to species-specific adaptations of prepared learning to ecological needs, such as described between specialist and generalist species [33].…”

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“…These variants differ in their predisposition to move and feed (Sokolowski, 1980; Kaun, Chakaborty-Chatterjee, & Sokolowski, 2008), learn and remember (Mery, Belay, Sokolowski, & Kawecki, 2007; Kaun, Hendel, Gerber, & Sokolowski, 2007; Reaume, Sokolowski, & Mery, 2011; Kohn et al, 2013; Donlea et al, 2012; Wang et al, 2008; Kuntz, Poeck, Sokolowski, & Strauss, 2012), endure stress (Dawson-Scully et al, 2010; Dawson-Scully, Armstrong, Kent, Robertson, & Sokolowski, 2007; Donlea et al, 2012) as well as in their tendency to interact with others in a social environment. Briefly, rover larvae move more while foraging for food, have longer short-term memory, are less resistant to heat, hypoxia and starvation stress, but are more resistant to sleep deprivation.…”