Data from: Genetic correlations among developmental and contextual behavioral plasticity in Drosophila melanogaster

Correlations among traits, including behaviors, are important because
traits that are genetically correlated may not evolve independently.
Recently, behavioral correlations research has expanded to include
correlations not only in mean-level behaviors, but also in behavioral
plasticity, i.e., the degree to which individuals change their behavior in
response to environmental stimuli. Positive correlations among behavioral
plasticities would imply that individuals or genotypes that are
behaviorally plastic in one way may also be plastic in other ways;
negative correlations could imply tradeoffs. Here, we examine aversive
odor conditioning (learning) at two time points, and plasticity in
pupation site selection behavior across substrates, in a panel of
Drosophila genotypes. These behaviors represent different types of
behavioral plasticity: contextual plasticity describes behavioral
responses to stimuli that are currently present, while developmental
plasticity describes behavioral responses to remembered experiences with
stimuli in the recent past. We find that learning scores and plasticity in
pupation site selection behavior are positively genetically correlated,
representing the first example of a genetic correlation between
developmental and contextual plasticity. These findings imply that
ecological and evolutionary theories focusing on variation in a single
dimension of behavioral plasticity may be incomplete.