Drosophila social clustering is disrupted by anesthetics and in narrow abdomen ion channel mutants

Members of many species tend to congregate, a behavioral strategy known as local enhancement. Selective advantages of local enhancement range from efficient use of resources to defense from predators. While previous studies have examined many types of social behavior in fruit flies, few have specifically investigated local enhancement. Resource-independent local enhancement (RILE) has recently been described in the fruit fly using a measure...