Social and nutritional factors shape larval aggregation, foraging, and body mass in a polyphagous fly.

ABSTRACT: The majority of insect species have a clearly defined larval stage during development. Larval nutrition is crucial for individuals' growth and development, and larval foraging success often depends on both resource availability and competition for those resources. To date, however, little is known about how these factors interact to shape larval development and behaviour. Here we manipulated the density of larvae of the polyphagous fruit fly pest Bactrocera tryoni ('Queensland fruit fly'), and the diet concentration of patches in a foraging arena to address this gap. Using advanced statistical methods of machine learning and linear regression models, we showed that high larval density results in overall high larval aggregation across all diets except in extreme diet dilutions. Larval aggre

SUBMITTER: Morimoto J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6170467 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature