Figure 4. The coupling between egg-laying and roaming states leads to greater dispersal of eggs along a food source.

(A) Average distance between a given egg and its k nearest eggs for wild-type animals, separated out for eggs laid while roaming and dwelling. *p<0.01, roaming versus dwelling for all k > 3, Bonferroni-corrected Wilcoxon ranked sign test. n = 30 animals. Data are means ± SEM. (B) Schematic of the assay for egg dispersal used in panel C. A grid is virtually superimposed upon the animal’s movement path and the number of squares that contain at least one egg is counted and divided by the number of squares where the animal explored. (C) Egg dispersal overall, as well as during roaming and dwelling, for WT (n = 30), cat-2(n4547) (n = 10), and dop-2;dop-3 (n = 19), quantified as the fraction of regions explored with egg-laying events. See panel B for a schematic of the assay. Data are means ± SEM. **p<0.0001, Wilcoxon signed rank test. *p<0.05, Mann-Whitney U test.

Figure 4—figure supplement 1. Fraction of eggs laid per state in dopamine pathway mutants.

Quantification of the fraction of eggs that were laid in each of the nine HMM states. Note that this measurement is distinct from egg-laying rate in each state, since this metric also takes into account the time spent in each state. *p<0.05, Bonferroni-corrected Mann-Whitney U test. All data are shown as means ± SEM.