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Abstract:
Pathogens and parasites can manipulate their hosts to optimize their own fitness.
For instance, bacterial pathogens have been shown to affect their host plants’ volatile and
non-volatile metabolites, which results in increased attraction of insect vectors to the plant,
and, hence, to increased pathogen dispersal. Behavioral manipulation by parasites has also
been shown for mice, snails and zebrafish as well as for insects. Here we show that infection
by pathogenic bacteria alters the social communication system of Drosophila melanogaster.
More specifically, infected flies and their frass emit dramatically increased amounts of fly
odors, including the aggregation pheromones methyl laurate, methyl myristate, and methyl
palmitate, attracting healthy flies, which in turn become infected and further enhance
pathogen dispersal. Thus, olfactory cues for attraction and aggregation are vulnerable to
pathogenic manipulation, and we show that the alteration of social pheromones can be
beneficial to the microbe while detrimental to the insect host.
