Data from: 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, demonstrating that natural
conditions can readily support the temporal windows required for many
social and reproductive behaviors typically studied in the laboratory.
More broadly, our findings highlight that aggregation size may be a key
driver of group stability in natural insect populations, advancing efforts
to link mechanistic behavioral research with ecological reality.