DOI: 10.5061/dryad.q573n5tfj
title: On the use of private versus social information in oviposition site choice decisions by Drosophila melanogaster females

description: Individuals are faced with decisions throughout their lifetimes, and the
 choices they make often have important consequences towards 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
 behaviour and decisions of others. Although social learning and copying
 behaviours are widespread, much remains unknown about how effective and
 adaptive copying behaviour 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 favoured 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 behaviour, or are instead
 responding to signals that may not be of relevance to oviposition site
 suitability.
description: The data was collected through observation of the location of
 female fruit flies on different media dishes. The number of offspring that
 females oviposited on the dishes was also counted.
description: EXP_1_IV_24_FOCAL_FEMALES_SUMS_OFFSPRING.csv 
 This file contains the total number of focal IV-24 female counts
 on each media type in each arena, and the number of offspring eclosing
 from those dishes in Experiment # 1 
 EXP_1_IV_24_FEMALES.xlsx   62.63 kB This
 file contains the raw focal IV-24 female counts on each media type in each
 arena at each observation time-point in Experiment # 1
 
 EXP_1_IV_FEMALES.xlsx   62.93 kB This file
 contains the raw focal IV female counts on each media type in each arena
 at each observation time-point in Experiment # 1 
 
 EXP_1_IV_FOCAL_FEMALES_SUMS_OFFSPRING.csv   4.46 kB 
 This file contains the total number of focal IV female counts on
 each media type in each arena, and the number of offspring eclosing from
 those dishes in Experiment # 1 
 EXP_2_SUMS_MATED_VIRGIN_FOCAL_FEMALES.csv   5.96 kB 
 This file contains the total number of focal mated and virgin
 female counts on each media type in each arena, and the number of
 offspring eclosing from dishes in those arenas that had virgin focal
 females in Experiment # 2 
 EXP_2_MATED_FEMALES.xlsx   58.24 kB This
 file contains the raw focal mated female counts on each media type in each
 arena at each observation time-point in Experiment # 2
 EXP_2_VIRGIN_FEMALES.xlsx   58.24 kB
 This file contains the raw focal mated female counts
 on each media type in each arena at each observation time-point in
 Experiment # 2