Department of Plant Protection, College of Plant Science & Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Ngaoundere, Ngaoundere, Cameroon.
PLoS One. 2019 Jan 16;14(1):e0210109. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210109. eCollection 2019.
The gut microbiome of insects directly or indirectly affects the metabolism, immune status, sensory perception and feeding behavior of its host. Here, we examine the hypothesis that in the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis, Diptera: Tephritidae), the presence or absence of gut symbionts affects foraging behavior and nutrient ingestion. We offered protein-starved flies, symbiotic or aposymbiotic, a choice between diets containing all amino acids or only the non-essential ones. The different diets were presented in a foraging arena as drops that varied in their size and density, creating an imbalanced foraging environment. Suppressing the microbiome resulted in significant changes of the foraging behavior of both male and female flies. Aposymbiotic flies responded faster to the diets offered in experimental arenas, spent more time feeding, ingested more drops of food, and were constrained to feed on time-consuming patches (containing small drops of food), when these offered the full complement of amino acids. We discuss these results in the context of previous studies on the effect of the gut microbiome on host behavior, and suggest that these be extended to the life history dimension.
昆虫的肠道微生物群直接或间接影响其宿主的代谢、免疫状态、感官感知和进食行为。在这里，我们检验了这样一个假设，即在东方果实蝇（Bactrocera dorsalis，双翅目：实蝇科）中，肠道共生体的存在与否会影响觅食行为和营养摄入。我们为饥饿的、共生的或非共生的果蝇提供了一个选择，让它们在含有所有氨基酸或仅非必需氨基酸的饮食之间进行选择。不同的饮食以大小和密度不同的液滴形式呈现在觅食场中，从而创造出一个不平衡的觅食环境。抑制微生物组会导致雌雄果蝇的觅食行为发生显著变化。非共生的果蝇对实验场提供的饮食反应更快，花更多的时间进食，摄入更多的食物液滴，并被限制在需要花费大量时间的斑块上进食（含有少量食物液滴），而这些斑块提供了完整的氨基酸组合。我们根据先前关于肠道微生物群对宿主行为影响的研究结果来讨论这些结果，并建议将这些结果扩展到生活史维度。
