What can a non-eusocial insect tell us about the neural basis of group behaviour?

Ferreira, Clara Howcroft; Moita, Marta A.

doi:10.1016/j.cois.2019.09.001

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Recently, social space has been used as an effective assay to study social interactions with others in a group to identify neural circuitry, underlying mechanisms, and functional changes within the fly brain that modulate these interactions [ 2 ]. Other social behaviors, including courtship, aggression, sociability, and Drosophila Stress Odorant (dSO) avoidance, are also used to examine the underlying mechanisms of social behavior in Drosophila [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abnormal Social Interactions in a Drosophila Mutant of an Autism Candidate Gene: Neuroligin 3

Yost

Robinson

Baxter

et al. 2020

IJMS

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Social interactions are typically impaired in neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism, for which the genetic underpinnings are very complex. Social interactions can be modeled by analysis of behaviors, including social spacing, sociability, and aggression, in simpler organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster. Here, we examined the effects of mutants of the autism-related gene neuroligin 3 (nlg3) on fly social and non-social behaviors. Startled-induced negative geotaxis is affected by a loss of function nlg3 mutation. Social space and aggression are also altered in a sex- and social-experience-specific manner in nlg3 mutant flies. In light of the conserved roles that neuroligins play in social behavior, our results offer insight into the regulation of social behavior in other organisms, including humans.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Abnormal Social Interactions in a Drosophila Mutant of an Autism Candidate Gene: Neuroligin 3

Yost

Robinson

Baxter

et al. 2020

IJMS

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“…Vertebrates use such social cues to procure food 3 for example using vision to assess where and how much others are eating 4 , to choose mates by copying the decisions of others 5 based for example on olfactory cues 6 , and to infer predation threat levels 7 for instance by auditory detection of escape 8 or freezing (active immobility response aimed at becoming inconspicuous) 9 . These types of social cue usage are also reported in invertebrates including in Drosophila melanogaster 10,11 , guiding aggregation on food [12][13][14][15] , reproduction related decisions in mating 16,17 and oviposition [18][19][20] , as well defensive responses 21 , many of which relying at least partially on vision.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Social cues of safety can override differences in threat level

Ferreira

Heinemans

Farias

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Animals in groups integrate social information with that directly-gathered about the environment to guide decisions regarding reproduction, foraging and defence againts predatory threats. In the context of predation, usage of social information has acute fitness benefits, aiding the detection of predators, the mounting of concerted defensive responses, or allowing the inference of safety, permitting other beneficial behaviours such as foraging for food. Individual and group defence responses to predatory threats can vary in modality and vigour depending on the perceived threat level. Moreover, predation level has been shown to modulate the use of social cues about foraging sites. Whether and how different threat levels affect the use of social cues to guide defence responses, is currently unknow. We previously showed that Drosophila melanogaster display a graded decrease in freezing behaviour, triggered by an inescapable visual threat, with increasing group sizes. Crucially, we identified the movement of others as a cue of safety and its cessation a cue of threat and found the group responses to be primarily guided by the safety cues, resulting in a net social buffering effect. Here, we investigated how threat level impacts the use of social cues by exposing flies individually and in groups to two threat imminences using looms of different speeds. We show that freezing responses are stronger to the faster looms regardless of social condition. However, social buffering was stronger for groups exposed to the fast looms, such that the increase in freezing caused by the higher threat was less prominent in flies tested in groups than those tested individually. Through artificial control of behaviour, we created different group compositions, titrating the motion cues that were maintained across threat levels. We, found that the same level of safety motion cues had a bigger weight on the flies' decisions when these were exposed to the higher threat, thus overriding differences in perceived threat levels. These findings shed light on the 'safety in numbers' effect, revealing the modulation of the saliency of social safety cues across threat intensities, a possible mechanism to regulate costly defensive responses.

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“…Vertebrates use such social cues to procure food (Galef and Giraldeau, 2001), for example, using vision to assess where and how much others are eating (Coolen et al, 2005), to choose mates by copying the decisions of others (Kavaliers et al, 2017) based, for example, on olfactory cues (Galef and Laland, 2005), and to infer predation threat levels (Griffin, 2004), for instance, by auditory detection of escape (Murray et al, 2017) or freezing (active immobility response aimed at becoming inconspicuous) (Pereira et al, 2012). These types of social cue usage are also reported in invertebrates, including Drosophila melanogaster (Ferreira and Moita, 2019;Couzin-Fuchs and Ayali, 2021), guiding aggregation on food (Tinette et al, 2004;Dombrovski et al, 2017Dombrovski et al, , 2019Shultzaberger et al, 2018), reproduction-related decisions in mating (Mery et al, 2009;Danchin et al, 2018) and oviposition (Sarin and Dukas, 2009;Battesti et al, 2012;Bailly et al, 2021), as well as defensive responses (Ferreira and Moita, 2020), many of which rely at least partially on vision.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Cues of Safety Can Override Differences in Threat Level

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals in groups integrate social with directly gathered information about the environment to guide decisions regarding reproduction, foraging, and defence against predatory threats. In the context of predation, usage of social information has acute fitness benefits, aiding the detection of predators, the mounting of concerted defensive responses, or allowing the inference of safety, permitting other beneficial behaviors, such as foraging for food. We previously showed that Drosophila melanogaster exposed to an inescapable visual threat use freezing by surrounding flies as a cue of danger and movement resumption as a cue of safety. Moreover, group responses were primarily guided by the safety cues, resulting in a net social buffering effect, i.e., a graded decrease in freezing behavior with increasing group sizes, similar to other animals. Whether and how different threat levels affect the use of social cues to guide defense responses remains elusive. Here, we investigated this issue by exposing flies individually and in groups to two threat imminences using looms of different speeds. We showed that freezing responses are stronger to the faster looms regardless of social condition. However, social buffering was stronger for groups exposed to the fast looms, such that the increase in freezing caused by the higher threat was less prominent in flies tested in groups than those tested individually. Through artificial control of movement, we created groups composed of moving and freezing flies and by varying group composition, we titrated the motion cues that surrounding flies produce, which were held constant across threat levels. We found that the same level of safety motion cues had a bigger weight on the flies’ decisions when these were exposed to the higher threat, thus overriding differences in perceived threat levels. These findings shed light on the “safety in numbers” effect, revealing the modulation of the saliency of social safety cues across threat intensities, a possible mechanism to regulate costly defensive responses.

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What can a non-eusocial insect tell us about the neural basis of group behaviour?

Cited by 9 publications

References 82 publications

Abnormal Social Interactions in a Drosophila Mutant of an Autism Candidate Gene: Neuroligin 3

Abnormal Social Interactions in a Drosophila Mutant of an Autism Candidate Gene: Neuroligin 3

Social cues of safety can override differences in threat level

Social Cues of Safety Can Override Differences in Threat Level

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