Figure 1.
The innate oviposition behavior in response to fermented diet. (a) A diagram of the egg laying preference assay with the 2-choice cage. The surface of fly food was augmented with bacteria to generate a fermented diet for 48 h in the incubator, whereas the control was used with H2O. Each food item was chopped into two halves, and each half was placed into the 2-choice cages. Mated females with yeast paste were transferred to the 2-choice cage and allowed to lay eggs for 16 h. The numbers of eggs were counted on each half, and the oviposition preference was calculated. (b) The quantification of egg laying preference for fermented fly food by wild-type Oregon R (OR) and Canston S (CS). H2O: water, EF: Enterococcus faecium, AA: acetic acid; mocks are two halves of fly food with water or EF). The one-sample t-test was used to assess the mean deviance of each column from 0; ANOVA tests with LSD post hoc analysis were used to calculate significant differences between columns, n = 6–14. (c) The stimulation of egg laying with fermentation. Twenty females were transferred into each cage of the whole-forced cage with a control or fermented diet, respectively, and the average number of eggs was calculated. ANOVA tests with LSD post hoc analysis, n = 6–8. Mean ± SEM; Symbols: NS p > 0.05; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.