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Elife

Title:		Inversion of pheromone preference optimizes foraging in C. elegans
Author(s):		Dal Bello M; Perez-Escudero A; Schroeder FC; Gore J;
Address:		"Physics of Living Systems Group, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States. Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA), Centre de Biologie Integrative (CBI), Universite de Toulouse; CNRS; UPS, Toulouse, France. Boyce Thompson Institute and Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, New York, United States"
Journal Title:		Elife
Year:		2021
Volume:		20210706
Issue:
Page Number:		-
DOI:		10.7554/eLife.58144
ISSN/ISBN:		2050-084X (Electronic) 2050-084X (Linking)
Abstract:		"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 Caenorhabditis elegans 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"
Keywords:		Animals Caenorhabditis elegans/*physiology Feeding Behavior Pheromones/*metabolism C.elegans associative learning behavioral plasticity ecology optimal foraging pheromone valence pheromones;
Notes:		"MedlineDal Bello, Martina Perez-Escudero, Alfonso Schroeder, Frank C Gore, Jeff eng R35 GM131877/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ LT000537/2015/Human Frontier Science Program/ P40 OD010440/NH/NIH HHS/ ALTF 818-2014/European Molecular Biology Organization/ Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't England 2021/07/07 Elife. 2021 Jul 6; 10:e58144. doi: 10.7554/eLife.58144"