Data from: Social and nutritional factors shape larval aggregation, foraging, and body mass in a polyphagous fly

The majority of insect species have a clearly defined larval stage during development. Larval nutrition is crucial for individuals’ growth and development, and larval foraging success often depends on both resource availability and competition for those resources. To date, however, little is known about how these factors interact to shape larval development and behaviour. Here we manipulated the density of larvae of the polyphagous fruit fly pest Bactrocera tryoni (‘Queensland fruit fly’), and the diet concentration of patches in a foraging arena to address this gap. Using advanced statistical methods of machine learning and linear regression models, we showed that high larval density results in overall high larval aggregation across all diets except in extreme diet dilutions. Larval aggregation was positively associated with larval body mass across all diet concentrations except in extreme diet dilutions where this relationship was reversed. Over time, larvae in low-density arenas also tended to aggregate while those in high-density arenas tended to disperse, an effect that was observed for all diet concentrations. Furthermore, larvae in high-density arenas displayed significant avoidance of low concentration diets – a behaviour that was not observed amongst larvae in low-density arenas. Thus, aggregation can help, rather than hinder, larval growth in high-density environments, and larvae may be better able to explore available nutrition when at high-density than when at low-density.

Usage Notes
ForagingChoice_different_dietsData for the foraging experiment where larvae had to choose between different diets.ForagingChoice_aggregationData for the foraging experiment to evaluate aggregation. Note that to upload this file in R, please use read.table with sep argument = "\t".Larval_body_massData for larval body mass.

昆虫物种的绝大多数在发育过程中均具有明确界定之幼虫阶段。幼虫的营养对于个体的生长与发育至关重要，幼虫觅食的成功往往取决于资源可用性及其竞争状况。然而，截至目前，关于这些因素如何相互作用以塑造幼虫的发育与行为，我们所知甚少。本研究中，我们通过操纵多食性水果蝇害虫Bactrocera tryoni（‘昆士兰水果蝇’）幼虫的密度，以及觅食场中斑块饲料的浓度，旨在填补这一知识空白。利用机器学习的先进统计方法与线性回归模型，我们揭示了在高幼虫密度下，幼虫在所有饲料浓度下均呈现出整体的高聚集趋势，除了在极端饲料稀释的情况下。除极端饲料稀释外，幼虫聚集与幼虫体重在所有饲料浓度下均呈正相关关系，而在极端饲料稀释的情况下，这种关系则发生逆转。随着时间的推移，低密度场中的幼虫也倾向于聚集，而高密度场中的幼虫则倾向于分散，这一现象在所有饲料浓度下均有观察到。此外，高密度场中的幼虫显示出对低浓度饲料的显著规避行为——这一行为在低密度场中的幼虫中并未观察到。因此，在密集环境中，聚集可能有助于而非阻碍幼虫的生长，并且幼虫在密集度较高时可能比在密集度较低时更能有效地探索可用的营养。