Meeting Abstract
Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism for studying sexual and mating behaviors. Previous research has shown that raising flies in isolation affects the development of the olfactory and visual systems. Because changes to the olfactory and visual systems could affect mating, we hypothesized that population density and social interactions as larvae will affect the fecundity of adult flies. To test this hypothesis, we raised larvae in a high density, a medium density, and in isolation. None of these population densities were food limiting. After eclosion, we set up nine different pairwise crosses of the adults (high-density female x high-density male, medium-density female x high-density male, etc.). We are recording the effect of larval density on eclosion patterns, body size, and fecundity. Our preliminary data suggest that females raised in a moderate density environment as larvae may be the most fecund. We will continue to run these crosses for a total of 10 replicates of each pairwise cross to gather more data for analysis. This research will contribute to the understanding of the effects of population density and social interactions on fruit fly behavior.
