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Social foraging extends associative odor-food memory expression in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster)

Aarti Sehdev, Yunusa Mohammed, Cansu Tafrali, Paul Szyszka
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/636399
Aarti Sehdev
University of Konstanz, Department of Biology, Neurobiology, Konstanz 78457, Germany
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Yunusa Mohammed
University of Konstanz, Department of Biology, Neurobiology, Konstanz 78457, Germany
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Cansu Tafrali
University of Konstanz, Department of Biology, Neurobiology, Konstanz 78457, Germany
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Paul Szyszka
University of Konstanz, Department of Biology, Neurobiology, Konstanz 78457, GermanyUniversity of Otago, Department of Zoology, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
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  • For correspondence: paul@szyszkalab.com
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ABSTRACT

Animals socially interact during foraging to share information about the quality and location of food sources. The mechanisms of social information transfer during foraging have been mostly studied at the behavioral level, and its underlying neural mechanisms are largely unknown. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has become a model for studying the neural bases of social information transfer, as fruit flies show a rich repertoire of social behaviors and provide a well-developed genetic toolbox to monitor and manipulate neuronal activity. Social information transfer has already been characterized for fruit flies’ egg laying, mate choice, foraging and aversive associative learning, however the role of social information transfer on associative odor-food learning during foraging are unknown. Here we present an automated foraging assay for groups of walking flies that allows studying the effect of group size on the formation and expression of associative odor-food memories. We found that inter-fly attraction increases with group size and that groups of flies exhibit extended odor-food memory expression, as compared to single or pairs of flies. We discuss possible behavioral and neural mechanisms of this social effect on odor-food memory expression. This study opens up opportunities to investigate how social interactions are relayed in the neural circuitry of learning and memory expression.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 13, 2019.
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Social foraging extends associative odor-food memory expression in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster)
Aarti Sehdev, Yunusa Mohammed, Cansu Tafrali, Paul Szyszka
bioRxiv 636399; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/636399
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Social foraging extends associative odor-food memory expression in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster)
Aarti Sehdev, Yunusa Mohammed, Cansu Tafrali, Paul Szyszka
bioRxiv 636399; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/636399

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