Foraging Drosophila flies are open for new microbial partners
In a comprehensive ecological study, a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena examined three different species of the genus Drosophila and their interactions with their natural food resources, in particular the yeasts associated with these substrates. They found that vinegar flies do not necessarily prefer yeasts they know from their natural environments, but were also attracted by yeasts found in a foreign habitat. Female flies sometimes even decided to lay their eggs in the presence of previously unknown yeast communities, although their offspring had less chance of survival there. Such processes in nature could be a key factor that leads to the flies populating new habitats and, provided that the larvae also survive there, the formation of niches—and, ultimately, the evolution of new species. The study is published in Oikos