Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans
<jats:p>Foraging animals have to locate food sources that are usually patchily distributed and subject to competition. Deciding when to leave a food patch is challenging and requires the animal to integrate information about food availability with cues signaling the presence of other individua...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141889 |
| _version_ | 1826214385505271808 |
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| author | Dal Bello, Martina Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Schroeder, Frank C Gore, Jeff |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Dal Bello, Martina Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Schroeder, Frank C Gore, Jeff |
| author_sort | Dal Bello, Martina |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p>Foraging animals have to locate food sources that are usually patchily distributed and subject to competition. Deciding when to leave a food patch is challenging and requires the animal to integrate information about food availability with cues signaling the presence of other individuals (e.g., pheromones). To study how social information transmitted via pheromones can aid foraging decisions, we investigated the behavioral responses of the model animal <jats:italic>Caenorhabditis elegans</jats:italic> to food depletion and pheromone accumulation in food patches. We experimentally show that animals consuming a food patch leave it at different times and that the leaving time affects the animal preference for its pheromones. In particular, worms leaving early are attracted to their pheromones, while worms leaving later are repelled by them. We further demonstrate that the inversion from attraction to repulsion depends on associative learning and, by implementing a simple model, we highlight that it is an adaptive solution to optimize food intake during foraging.</jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:04:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/141889 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:04:14Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1418892023-01-10T15:32:39Z Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans Dal Bello, Martina Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Schroeder, Frank C Gore, Jeff Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics <jats:p>Foraging animals have to locate food sources that are usually patchily distributed and subject to competition. Deciding when to leave a food patch is challenging and requires the animal to integrate information about food availability with cues signaling the presence of other individuals (e.g., pheromones). To study how social information transmitted via pheromones can aid foraging decisions, we investigated the behavioral responses of the model animal <jats:italic>Caenorhabditis elegans</jats:italic> to food depletion and pheromone accumulation in food patches. We experimentally show that animals consuming a food patch leave it at different times and that the leaving time affects the animal preference for its pheromones. In particular, worms leaving early are attracted to their pheromones, while worms leaving later are repelled by them. We further demonstrate that the inversion from attraction to repulsion depends on associative learning and, by implementing a simple model, we highlight that it is an adaptive solution to optimize food intake during foraging.</jats:p> 2022-04-13T17:26:43Z 2022-04-13T17:26:43Z 2021 2022-04-13T17:24:17Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141889 Dal Bello, Martina, Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso, Schroeder, Frank C and Gore, Jeff. 2021. "Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans." eLife, 10. en 10.7554/ELIFE.58144 eLife Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd eLife |
| spellingShingle | Dal Bello, Martina Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Schroeder, Frank C Gore, Jeff Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title | Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title_full | Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title_fullStr | Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title_full_unstemmed | Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title_short | Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans |
| title_sort | inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in c elegans |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141889 |
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