Dataset Information

Egg-laying demand induces aversion of UV light in Drosophila females.

ABSTRACT: Drosophila melanogaster females are highly selective about the chemosensory quality of their egg-laying sites, an important trait that promotes the survival and fitness of their offspring. How egg-laying females respond to UV light is not known, however. UV is a well-documented phototactic cue for adult Drosophila, but it is an aversive cue for larvae. Here, we show that female flies exhibit UV aversion in response to their egg-laying demand. First, females exhibit egg-laying aversion of UV: they prefer to lay eggs on dark sites when choosing between UV-illuminated and dark sites. Second, they also exhibit movement aversion of UV: positional tracking of single females suggests that egg-laying demand increases their tendency to turn away from UV. Genetic manipulations of the retina suggest that egg-laying and movement aversion of UV are both mediated by the inner (R7) and not the outer (R1-R6) photoreceptors. Finally, we show that the Dm8 amacrine neurons, a synaptic target of R7 photoreceptors and a mediator of UV spectral preference, are dispensable for egg-laying aversion but essential for movement aversion of UV. This study suggests that egg-laying demand can temporarily convert UV into an aversive cue for female Drosophila and that R7 photoreceptors recruit different downstream targets to control different egg-laying-induced behavioral modifications.

SUBMITTER: Zhu EY

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4255361 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Egg-laying demand induces aversion of UV light in Drosophila females.

Zhu Edward Y EY Guntur Ananya R AR He Ruo R Stern Ulrich U Yang Chung-Hui CH

Current biology : CB 20141030 23

Drosophila melanogaster females are highly selective about the chemosensory quality of their egg-laying sites, an important trait that promotes the survival and fitness of their offspring. How egg-laying females respond to UV light is not known, however. UV is a well-documented phototactic cue for adult Drosophila, but it is an aversive cue for larvae. Here, we show that female flies exhibit UV aversion in response to their egg-laying demand. First, females exhibit egg-laying aversion of UV: the ...[more]

PMID: 25455037

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Project description:How a nervous system assembles and coordinates a suite of elementary behavioral steps into a complex behavior is not well understood. While often presented as a stereotyped sequence of events, even extensively studied behaviors such as fly courtship are rarely a strict repetition of the same steps in a predetermined sequence in time. We are focusing on oviposition, the act of laying an egg, in flies of the genus Drosophila to describe the elementary behavioral steps or microbehaviors that a single female fly undertakes prior to and during egg laying. We have analyzed the hierarchy and relationships in time of these microbehaviors in three closely related Drosophila species with divergent egg-laying preferences and uncovered cryptic differences in their behavioral patterns. Using high-speed imaging, we quantified in depth the oviposition behavior of single females of Drosophila suzukii, Drosophila biarmipes and Drosophila melanogaster in a novel behavioral assay. By computing transitions between microbehaviors, we identified a common ethogram structure underlying oviposition of all three species. Quantifying parameters such as relative time spent on a microbehavior and its average duration, however, revealed clear differences between species. In addition, we examined the temporal dynamics and probability of transitions to different microbehaviors relative to a central event of oviposition, ovipositor contact. Although the quantitative analysis highlights behavioral variability across flies, it reveals some interesting trends for each species in the mode of substrate sampling, as well as possible evolutionary differences. Larger datasets derived from automated video annotation will overcome this paucity of data in the future, and use the same framework to reappraise these observed differences. Our study reveals a common architecture to the oviposition ethogram of three Drosophila species, indicating its ancestral state. It also indicates that Drosophila suzukii's behavior departs quantitatively and qualitatively from that of the outgroup species, in line with its known divergent ethology. Together, our results illustrate how a global shift in ethology breaks down in the quantitative reorganization of the elementary steps underlying a complex behavior.

Dataset Information

Egg-laying demand induces aversion of UV light in Drosophila females.

Publications

Egg-laying demand induces aversion of UV light in Drosophila females.

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