Fig. 2. D. sechellia make frequent substrate indentations during oviposition.

a Photo of the noni juice/agarose substrate at the end of a single-fly oviposition assay with D. sechellia illustrating the many indentations in the agarose surface and rare eggs. b Still images from high-speed movie sequences of D. sechellia oviposition behavior illustrating a digging event that does not lead to egg deposition, which results in the formation of a visible indentation on the substrate (left), and a digging event that culminates in egg deposition (right). The full movies are provided in Supplementary Movies 4 and 5. c Rate and distribution of egg-laying and indentation formation of different species and strains on different substrates in a single-fly two-choice oviposition assay with noni juice and apple cider vinegar (ACV) as oviposition substrates (indicated by different colors in the figure); N = 19–60 flies across 1-2 technical replicates. To obtain D. melanogaster ovo^D1/+ females, ovo^D1v24/Y/C(1)Dx,y,f males were crossed to D. melanogaster CS females. d Summed egg-laying and indentation rate of the experiments in c. Statistically-significant differences from the CS strain are indicated: ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05; NS P > 0.05 (Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test with Nemenyi post-hoc test). Exact P values for the statistical comparisons are provided in the Source Data files.