Sensory mutations in Drosophila melanogaster influence associational effects between resources during oviposition.

ABSTRACT: Neighboring resources can affect insect oviposition behavior when the complexity of sensory information obscures information about host resource availability in heterogeneous resource patches. These effects are referred to as associational effects and are hypothesized to occur through constraints in the sensory processing of the insect during host search, resulting into suboptimal resource use. Because the possibilities to study these constraints on naturally occurring animals are limited, we instead used sensory mutants of Drosophila melanogaster to determine the importance of sensory information in the occurrence of associational effects. We found that oviposition was mainly governed by non-volatile chemical cues and less by volatile cues. Moreover, the loss of gustatory sensilla resulte

SUBMITTER: Verschut TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5570953 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature