Long-term, high-resolution field monitoring reveals increased temporal persistence of larger aggregations in fruit flies

Understanding how insect behaviors studied under controlled laboratory conditions unfold in natural environments remains a major challenge, which limits our understanding of the ecological relevance of the studied behaviors. The genetic and molecular mechanisms of social interactions are intensively studied in Drosophila melanogaster, often by exposing flies to group settings for periods ranging from minutes to several days. However, the duration of group formation in the wild remains poorly understood, limiting our ability to assess whether laboratory-identified social behaviors actually have the temporal opportunity to occur in nature. Using long-term, high-resolution field monitoring, we found that groups persist up to ten hours and that the duration of group formation increases with the number of flies but is not modulated by environmental factors such as temperature. These results provide rare empirical evidence for multi-hour group persistence in wild D. melanogaster, demonstratin..., Field monitoring took place from May 19th to November 10th, 2025, at our established field site (Figure 1A). Twice a week, an automated pet feeder with six compartments (Amazon Basics; Figure 1B) was deployed. Compartments of the feeder were filled with 0.4 g active dry yeast, 1.4 g sucrose, 100 ml water, 2 drops of dish soap, and a 5mm thick slice of banana. Feeders were programmed so that one compartment opened for two hours before closing automatically, providing six distinct 2-hour sampling intervals over 12 hours. After 12 hours, the feeder was replaced by a second feeder prepared in the same way to extend monitoring to 24 hours. Prior to being deployed, each feeder was kept for one hour at room temperature, allowing the yeast to become activated and to begin metabolizing the sucrose. All flies found in each compartment were counted, identified to the species level using Markow & O’Grady (2006, and sexed. D. melanogaster and D. simulans can morphologically only be distinguished..., # Data from: Long-term, high-resolution field monitoring reveals increased temporal persistence of larger aggregations in fruit flies

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.dfn2z35gd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z35gd)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: analysis.R

**Description:** R script used for statistical analysis.

**Workflow of the analysis:**

1\) Generation of additional variables from the dataset that include the total number of flies collected each day (variable: total_number_flies_per_day)

2\) Generation of a vector that includes the longest stretch of flies trapped without a zero in between per day. These data were manually collected from the raw data.

3\) Generation of variables that include environmental variables. Reduction to one value per day (before: one value per bin)

4\) Generation of a table that includes the longest group formation, environmental variables, and the total number of flies of that day. Each row is one ...,