Individuals are faced with decisions throughout their lifetimes, and the choices they make often have important consequences toward their fitness. Being able to discern which available option is best to pursue often incurs sampling costs, which may be largely avoided by copying the behavior and decisions of others. Although social learning and copying behaviors are widespread, much remains unknown about how effective and adaptive copying behavior is, as well as the factors that underlie its expression. Recently, it has been suggested that since female fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) appear to rely heavily on public information when selecting oviposition sites, they are a promising model system for researching patch-choice copying, and more generally, the mechanisms that control decision making. Here, we set out to determine how well female distinguish between socially produced cues, and whether females are using “relevant” signals when choosing an oviposition site. We found that females showed a strong preference for ovipositing on media patches that had been previously occupied by ovipositing females of the same species and diet over other female outgroups. However, in a separate assay, we observed that females favored ovipositing on media patches that previously housed virgin males over those exhibiting alternative conspecific signals. Our results confirm that females use cues left behind by other flies when choosing between potential oviposition sites, though their prioritization of these signals raises serious questions as to whether fruit flies are employing copying behavior, or are instead responding to signals that may not be of relevance to oviposition site suitability.

中文翻译：

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关于黑腹果蝇雌性在产卵地点选择决策中的使用

个人一生都会面临决策，他们做出的选择通常会对他们的身体状况产生重要影响。能够分辨出哪种最佳选择是最佳选择，通常会导致抽样成本增加，而这可以通过复制其他人的行为和决策而在很大程度上避免。尽管社会学习和复制行为十分普遍，但对于有效和适应性复制行为以及其表达基础的各种因素，人们仍然知之甚少。最近，有人提出，自从雌果蝇（果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster））在选择产卵地点时似乎严重依赖公共信息，它们是用于研究修补程序选择复制的有希望的模型系统，更广泛地说，是控制决策的机制。在这里，我们着手确定女性在社会上产生的暗示之间的区别程度，以及女性在选择产卵部位时是否使用“相关”信号。我们发现雌性显示出强烈的排卵偏好，而该种斑块以前是由同种和不同饮食的雌性对卵生卵，而不是其他雌性群体。但是，在单独的分析中，我们观察到雌性比先前表现出同种特异性信号的雌性更倾向于在以前容纳原始雄性的培养基上产卵。