Friendly food for fitter flies? - Influence of dietary microbial species on food choice and parasitoid resistance inDrosophila

Abstract

Nutrition fuels any activity performed by an organism and has been shown to affect its ability to withstand pathogens and parasites. Furthermore, animals over a wide range of taxa have been shown to exhibit a choice of foods and nutrients that are beneficial to their fitness. Saprophagous animals most often feed on microorganisms growing on dead organic matter rather than the organic matter itself. Various yeast species play an important role in both larval and adult nutrition of saprophagous Drosophila melanogaster. We hypothesised the dietary microbial species to affect life‐history traits of D. melanogaster, including the ability to fend offparasitoids, and larvae to prefer to devour those yeast species beneficial to their development and immunocompetence. Particular yeast species known to be associated with D. melanogaster could be shown to have a substantial influence on various larval and adult fitness traits including the ability to encapsulate eggs of the parasitoid wasp Asobara tabida. It also turned out that larvae chose to devour those yeast species which supported their ability to encapsulate parasitoid eggs. Which yeast species was preferred and had a beneficial impact on encapsulation ability, was subject to inter‐individual variability within the investigated population, hinting at the existence of an adaptive heritable variability regarding individual choice and salubriousness of food. The results suggest that the dietary microbial species of saprophagous insects may influence the resistance against parasitoid attacks and thus the outcome of the interaction between a saprophagous host and its parasitoids.

Yeast, not fruit volatiles mediate Drosophila melanogaster attraction, oviposition and development

“…; Ganter ; Zhu, Park & Baker ). Yeasts are known to support larval development and survival (Anagnostou, Dorsch & Rohlfs ; Anagnostou, Le Grand & Rohlfs ). A higher nutritional value of fruit inoculated with yeast over fruit alone is expected to favour sensory and physiological adaptations that facilitate detection and location of fermenting fruit for feeding and egg‐laying.…”

Fitness traits of Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae) after long-term laboratory rearing on different diets

“…In most nutritional studies on D. melanogaster, the quality of the diet is manipulated by altering the concentrations and ratios of yeast and sugar (Kristensen et al, 2011;Matzkin et al, 2011;Fanson et al, 2012;Güller et al, 2015), or by modifying the food by using different species of yeast (Anagnostou et al, 2010), dietary carbohydrates (Lushchak et al, 2014), lipids, vitamins (Reis, 2016) and food additives (Neethu et al, 2014). However, this study involved using diets that are modifi cations of this fl ies' natural food (tomato, banana, carrot and apple), prepared without adding sugar and yeast.…”

Associations of Yeasts with Spotted-Wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii; Diptera: Drosophilidae) in Cherries and Raspberries

“…Drosophila development is affected by the species of yeast available as food for the larvae (33). Also, microbial community composition of the larval substrate affects fitness in terms of susceptibility to parasitism (3). More diverse yeast communities appear to be preferred food sources (26), and bicultures of yeasts are generally more preferred than monocultures (33,34), though this is not universal (27).…”