Golden Shane, Dukas Reuven
Animal Behaviour Group, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2014 Nov 6;9(11):e112381. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112381. eCollection 2014.
Many animals copy the choices of others but the functional and mechanistic explanations for copying are still not fully resolved. We relied on novel behavioral protocols to quantify the value of patch-choice copying in fruit flies. In a titration experiment, we quantified how much nutritional value females were willing to trade for laying eggs on patches already occupied by larvae (social patches). Females were highly sensitive to nutritional quality, which was positively associated with their offspring success. Females, however, perceived social, low-nutrition patches (33% of the nutrients) as equally valuable as non-social, high-nutrition ones (100% of the nutrients). In follow-up experiments, we could not, however, either find informational benefits from copying others or detect what females' offspring may gain from developing with older larvae. Because patch-choice copying in fruit flies is a robust phenomenon in spite of potential costs due to competition, we suggest that it is beneficial in natural settings, where fruit flies encounter complex dynamics of microbial communities, which include, in addition to the preferred yeast species they feed on, numerous harmful fungi and bacteria. We suggest that microbial ecology underlies many cases of copying in nature.
许多动物会模仿其他动物的选择，但对于模仿行为的功能和机制解释仍未完全明确。我们依靠新颖的行为实验方案来量化果蝇在斑块选择模仿行为中的价值。在一项滴定实验中，我们量化了雌性果蝇愿意为在已有幼虫占据的斑块（社交斑块）上产卵而牺牲多少营养价值。雌性果蝇对营养质量高度敏感，营养质量与它们后代的成功率呈正相关。然而，雌性果蝇认为社交性的低营养斑块（含33%的营养成分）与非社交性的高营养斑块（含100%的营养成分）具有同等价值。在后续实验中，我们既未发现模仿其他果蝇带来的信息优势，也未检测到雌性果蝇的后代与大龄幼虫共同发育可能获得的益处。尽管由于竞争可能存在潜在成本，但果蝇的斑块选择模仿行为是一种普遍现象，我们认为在自然环境中这是有益的，因为果蝇会遇到复杂的微生物群落动态，其中除了它们食用的首选酵母种类外，还包括许多有害真菌和细菌。我们认为微生物生态学是自然界中许多模仿行为的基础。
