Evolutionary ecology of behavioral responses to infection

Evolutionary ecology of behavioural responses to infection

Funding: Society in Science Branco Weiss Fellowship

 Pathogen avoidance behaviour allows animals to avoid infection and also the deployment of potentially costly immunological defences. Drosophila melanogaster provides a genetically tractable model to investigate the mechanisms underlying pathogen avoidance. We investigate pathogen avoidance in the context of host behaviours such as feeding and oviposition site selection. Our focus is to quantify the levels of phenotypic variance, quantify how much of this variance is determined by host genetics, and we aim to understand how avoidance impacts fly fitness to infer how selection has acted on pathogen avoidance. Another major interest is how behavioral responses to infection contribute to individual heterogeneity in pathogen transmission.

Key publications

  • Monteith KM, Thornhill P, Vale PF. Genetic Variation in Trophic Avoidance Behaviour Shows Fruit Flies are Generally Attracted to Bacterial Substrates. Ecology and Evolution. 2024;14: e70541. doi:10.1002/ece3.70541

  • Vale, P.F., Siva-Jothy, J.A., Morrill, A. & Forbes, M.R. 2018. The influence of parasites on insect behavior. In: Insect Behavior: from mechanisms to ecological and evolutionary consequences. Oxford University Press

  • Romano, V., Lussiana, A., Monteith, K.M., MacIntosh, A.J.J. & Vale, P.F. 2022. Host genetics and pathogen species modulate infection-induced changes in social aggregation behaviour. Biology Letters 18: 20220233. Royal Society.

  • Ratz, T., Monteith, K.M., Vale, P.F. & Smiseth, P.T. 2021. Carry on caring: infected females maintain their parental care despite high mortality. Behavioral Ecology, doi: 10.1093/beheco/arab028.

  • Siva-Jothy, J.A. & Vale, P.F. 2019. Viral infection causes sex-specific changes in fruit fly social aggregation behaviour. Biology Letters 15: 20190344.

  • Siva-Jothy, J.A., Monteith, K.M. & Vale, P.F. 2018. Navigating infection risk during oviposition and cannibalistic foraging in a holometabolous insect. Behav. Ecol. 29: 1426–1435.

  • Vale, P.F. & Jardine, M.D. 2015. Sex-specific behavioural symptoms of viral gut infection and Wolbachia in Drosophila melanogaster. J. Insect Physiol. 82: 28–32.