Maggots' Food Selection Influenced by Other Maggots, Demonstrates Social Learning

A team of researchers from McMaster University found evidence of social learning in maggots, a discovery they say could parlay into a better understanding of social learning in humans.

On the surface, maggots, and even their parent fruit flies, have seemingly little in common with humans. But the researchers say fruit flies exhibit many of the same behaviors as humans and share 87 percent of the material responsible for neurological genetic disorders, which makes the insects a valuable model for study.

The study's lead author, Zachary Durisko and his colleague Reuven Dukas, both of McMaster's Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behavior, demonstrated that fruit fly maggots are able to distinguish between food sources that have been used by other larvae, which the researchers explain is a survival technique.

Maggots can smell that their peers have been feeding off of something and will naturally select a viable food source that other maggots have fed on over an uneaten item, the researchers report. They liken the scenario to arriving for the first time in a new city, seeing two restaurants and choosing a crowded one over an empty one.

Maggots "prefer the social over the non-social like we would do, and they learn to prefer the social over the non-social," Dukas said.

Several combinations of foods, both completely fresh and previously used, and of varying degrees of nutritional value, were used to compare the maggots' preferences.

Further study of social learning in maggots, the researchers report, could open the doors to further insight into human behavior and new treatments for human disorders, the researchers report.

Durisko and Dukas' findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.