Social communication of predator-induced changes in Drosophila behavior and germ line physiology.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral adaptation to environmental threats and subsequent social transmission of adaptive behavior has evolutionary implications. In Drosophila, exposure to parasitoid wasps leads to a sharp decline in oviposition. We show that exposure to predator elicits both an acute and learned oviposition depression, mediated through the visual system. However, long-term persistence of oviposition depression after predator removal requires neuronal signaling functions, a functional mushroom body, and neurally driven apoptosis of oocytes through effector caspases. Strikingly, wasp-exposed flies (teachers) can transmit egg-retention behavior and trigger ovarian apoptosis in naive, unexposed flies (students). Acquisition and behavioral execution of this socially learned behavior by naive flies requir

SUBMITTER: Kacsoh BZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4456452 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature