Behavioural Processes 125 (2016) 76–84 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Behavioural Processes jo ur nal home p ag e: www.elsevier.com/locate/behavproc Mate-choice copying in Drosophila melanogaster: Impact of demonstration conditions and male–male competition M. Germain a,b,c,∗ , S. Blanchet b,d , A. Loyau e,f,g , É. Danchin b,c a Université de Lyon, F-69000, Lyon; Université Lyon 1; CNRS, UMR5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, F-69622 Villeurbanne, France b CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, ENFA, UMR5174 EDB (Laboratoire Évolution & Diversité Biologique), 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France c Université de Toulouse, UMR5174 EDB, F-31062 Toulouse, France d CNRS, 09200 Moulis, France e Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Department of Conservation Biology, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany f Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Department of System Ecotoxicology, Permoserstrasse 15, 04138 Leipzig, Germany g ECOLAB, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, INPT, UPS, France a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 26 October 2015 Received in revised form 1 February 2016 Accepted 1 February 2016 Available online 3 February 2016 Keywords: Mate-choice copying Drosophila melanogaster Social learning Experimental protocol Competition Limited attention Cognition a b s t r a c t Individuals of many species, including invertebrates, have been shown to use social information in mate choice, notably by extracting information from the mating performance of opposite sex conspecifics, a process called “mate-choice copying” (MCC). Here, we performed four experiments with Drosophila melanogaster to investigate two aspects of MCC methodology: whether (i) providing positive and nega- tive social information simultaneously or sequentially during the demonstration phase of the protocol, and (ii) male–male competition during the mate-choice test, affect MCC. We found that the simultaneous provision of positive and negative information during demonstrations hampered female MCC perfor- mance, compared to the sequential provision of information. This can be interpreted in two alternative, yet not exclusive, ways: (i) attentional mechanisms may restrict the focus of the brain to one source of information at a time, and/or (ii) the shorter duration of demonstrations in the simultaneous protocol may have not permit full social learning use and may explain the non-detection of MCC in that protocol. Moreover, we did not detect any significant effect of male–male competition on female choice. This study thus provides further evidence for MCC in D. melanogaster and expands on the necessary methodology for detailed studies. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Organisms need to continually assess environmental cues to increase the accuracy in their appraisal of the environment (Wagner and Danchin, 2010). This allows them to adaptively adjust their behaviour to current conditions (Dall et al., 2005; Danchin et al., 2004). However, sources and types of information available in the environment are diverse, both qualitatively and quantita- tively, and it is still not clear how these numerous sources of information are perceived and processed, especially when they are contradictory. One intuitive view is that the more informa- tion available, the better the decision should be. For example, in the context of mate choice, multiple sources of information (i.e. ∗ Corresponding author at: Laboratoire de Biométrie et de Biologie Evolutive, UMR 5558, CNRS—Université Claude Bernard, 43, Boulevard du 11 Novembre 1918, 69622 Villeurbanne, France. E-mail address: marion.germain@univ-lyon1.fr (M. Germain). signals or cues) have been shown to provide a more accurate esti- mation of the overall quality of a potential mate (Candolin, 2003; Moller and Pomiankowski, 1993; Scheuber et al., 2004). However, an increasing number of studies suggest that a too high information flow may hamper learning (Dukas and Real, 1993; van Swinderen, 2007; Weiss and Papaj, 2003), which may be rooted in two different constraints that are not mutually exclusive: a perception/sensory constraint and/or a processing constraint. Processing constraints may result from a limited rate of infor- mation being processed by the brain (the “limited attention” hypothesis: Dukas, 2002; Dukas and Kamil, 2000). Alternatively, an organism may only attend to a subset of the available sources of information. For instance, organisms may filter out sources of information by focusing only on portions of the visual field at any given moment (spatially selective attention: Sareen et al., 2011), or by attending to only one or a few stimuli and ignoring the oth- ers (stimulus selective attention: Dukas, 2002). Sensory constraint, limited attention, and/or selective attention may strongly affect the simultaneous execution of two or more cognitive tasks; organisms http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2016.02.002 0376-6357/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.