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Biol Bull 148: 274-285. (April 1975)
© 1975 Marine Biological Laboratory
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SPECIFIC DEATH SITES IN A DROSOPHILA POPULATION CAGE

ROGER MILKMAN 1

1 Department of Zoology, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242

More than half the flies that die in a Drosophila melanogaster population cage do so in empty vials if they are provided. Before dying, the flies exhibit characteristic erratic behavior; if placed in uncrowded conditions they are fertile and they live for several weeks. This phenomenon is neither light-dependent nor exclusively age-dependent. Crowding is clearly important.

It appears that the healthier flies maintain moving territories, keeping others at a distance and thus minimizing crowding. The others emigrate, in this case into a resourceless chamber, so that socially-induced emigration becomes socially induced death. This physiologically unnecessary death is viewed as a component of an intrinsic population-density-regulating mechanism in Drosophila melanogaster, and presumably in many other organisms that have no fixed territories.






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Copyright © 1975 by the Marine Biological Laboratory.