Collie Joseph, Granela Odelvys, Brown Elizabeth B, Keene Alex C
Department of Biological Sciences, and the Program in Neurogenetics, Florida Atlantic University, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA.
iScience. 2020 Nov 19;23(12):101791. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101791. eCollection 2020 Dec 18.
Food represents a limiting resource for the growth and developmental progression of many animal species. As a consequence, competition over food, space, or other resources can trigger territoriality and aggressive behavior. In the monarch butterfly, caterpillars feed predominantly on milkweed, raising the possibility that access to milkweed is critical for growth and survival. Here, we characterize the role of food availability on aggression in monarch caterpillars and find that monarch caterpillars display stereotyped aggressive lunges that increase during development, peaking during the fourth and fifth instar stages. The number of lunges toward a conspecific caterpillar was significantly increased under conditions of low food availability, suggesting resource defense may trigger aggression. These findings establish monarch caterpillars as a model for investigating interactions between resource availability and aggressive behavior under ecologically relevant conditions and set the stage for future investigations into the neuroethology of aggression in this system.
食物是许多动物物种生长和发育进程中的一种限制性资源。因此，对食物、空间或其他资源的竞争会引发领地行为和攻击行为。在帝王蝶中，毛虫主要以马利筋为食，这增加了获取马利筋对其生长和生存至关重要的可能性。在这里，我们描述了食物可获得性在帝王蝶毛虫攻击行为中的作用，发现帝王蝶毛虫会表现出刻板的攻击性猛冲行为，这种行为在发育过程中会增加，在第四和第五龄期达到峰值。在食物可获得性低的条件下，对同种毛虫的猛冲次数显著增加，这表明资源防御可能会引发攻击行为。这些发现将帝王蝶毛虫确立为在生态相关条件下研究资源可获得性与攻击行为之间相互作用的模型，并为该系统中攻击行为的神经行为学的未来研究奠定了基础。
