Data from: Navigating infection risk during oviposition and cannibalistic foraging in a holometabolous insect

Deciding where to eat and raise offspring carries important fitness
consequences for all animals, especially if foraging, feeding and
reproduction increase pathogen exposure. In insects with complete
metamorphosis, foraging mainly occurs during the larval stage, while
oviposition decisions are made by adult females. Selection for infection
avoidance behaviours may therefore be developmentally uncoupled. Using a
combination of experimental infections and behavioral choice assays, we
tested if Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies avoid infectious
environments at distinct developmental stages. When given conspecific fly
carcasses as a food source, larvae did not discriminate between carcasses
that were clean or infected with the pathogenic Drosophila C Virus (DCV),
even though cannibalism was a viable route of DCV transmission. When
laying eggs, DCV-infected females did not discriminate between infectious
and non-infectious carcasses. Healthy mothers however, laid more eggs near
a clean rather than an infectious carcass. Avoidance during oviposition
changed over time: after an initial oviposition period, healthy mothers
stopped avoiding infectious carcasses. We attribute this to a trade-off
between infection risk and reproduction. Laying eggs near potentially
infectious carcasses was always preferred to sites containing only fly
food. Our findings suggest infection avoidance contributes to how mothers
provision their offspring and underline the need to consider infection
avoidance behaviors at multiple life-stages.