| Description |
Effective sensory perception is a vital aspect of survival for living organisms such as Drosophila. More specifically, olfaction, or the sense of smell, is essential because the detection of odors allows it to find potential food, danger, or specifically, where to lay eggs. This review will examine substrate preferences of the nine species forming the Drosophila melanogaster species subgroup. We show that D. melanogaster, D. simulans, D. mauritiana, D. teissieri, D. yakuba are generalist species, and that D. sechellia and D. terecta are specialist species. We also present the current knowledge of substrate use by lesser studied species such as D. orena and D. santomea. This review also includes a discussion of the geographic distributions of each species and their phylogenetic relationships. Lastly, we propose that oviposition assays can be done in order to quantify substrate preferences, and that laboratory conditions should be regulated in a manner that allows us to gather more accurate behavioral data for organisms used in speciation studies. |
