Cold-seeking behaviour mitigates reproductive losses from fungal infection in Drosophila.

ABSTRACT: Animals must tailor their life-history strategies to suit the prevailing conditions and respond to hazards in the environment. Animals with lethal infections are faced with a difficult choice: to allocate more resources to reproduction and suffer higher mortality or to reduce reproduction with the expectation of enhanced immunity and late-age reproduction. However, the strategies employed to mediate shifts in life-history traits are largely unknown. Here, we investigate the temperature preference of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, during infection with the fungal pathogen, Metarhizium robertsii, and the consequence of temperature preference on life-history traits. We have measured the temperature preference of fruit flies under different pathogen conditions. We conducted multiple f

SUBMITTER: Hunt VL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4879349 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature