article · PLoS ONE
The gut microbiome plays an important role in insect metabolism, immune response, sensory perception, and feeding patterns. An investigation into the oriental fruit fly examined how intestinal symbionts influence foraging choices and nutrient intake. Symbiotic flies and aposymbiotic flies with suppressed microbiomes were evaluated under protein starvation. The flies chose between diets containing a complete set of amino acids and diets containing only non-essential amino acids, presented across varied drop sizes and densities. Removing intestinal bacteria substantially altered the foraging dynamics of both male and female flies. Flies lacking gut symbionts reacted more quickly to available food, spent longer feeding, and consumed a greater number of drops. Furthermore, these aposymbiotic flies were compelled to feed on slower, more time-consuming food patches when those patches provided complete amino acid profiles.
Understanding how gut bacteria govern insect feeding decisions provides crucial insight into basic pest biology. The oriental fruit fly is an important species, and uncovering the biological mechanisms that dictate its nutrient seeking and consumption behaviour helps clarify how microbiome interactions shape insect ecology and resource acquisition in nutritionally varied environments.
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The gut microbiome of insects directly or indirectly affects the metabolism, immune status, sensory perception and feeding behavior of its host. Here, we examine the hypothesis that in the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis, Diptera: Tephritidae), the presence or absence of gut symbionts affects foraging behavior and nutrient ingestion. We offered protein-starved flies, symbiotic or aposymbiotic, a choice between diets containing all amino acids or only the non-essential ones. The different diets were presented in a foraging arena as drops that varied in their size and density, creating an imbalanced foraging environment. Suppressing the microbiome resulted in significant changes of the foraging behavior of both male and female flies. Aposymbiotic flies responded faster to the diets offered in experimental arenas, spent more time feeding, ingested more drops of food, and were constrained to feed on time-consuming patches (containing small drops of food), when these offered the full complement of amino acids. We discuss these results in the context of previous studies on the effect of the gut microbiome on host behavior, and suggest that these be extended to the life history dimension.
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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210109
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