Sustainable Development Goals
Abstract/Objectives
Social interaction is an exchange of information or actions between two or more conspecifics that occurs in numerous species and plays an important role in regulating animal behavior, physiology and, potentially, longevity. Although social impacts on health and aging have been reported in different species, given the complexity of social environments, our understandings of social influences on longevity are still at a very early stage. The social environments are composed of dynamic and complex social factors. Various social partners with distinct genetic backgrounds, behaviors, or health conditions could potentially affect individuals differently, not only in psychological disorders, but also in other diseases. We are therefore interested in knowing how different social partners influence animal health condition as well as longevity. By cohousing target flies with various social donors, fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, presents as a good model organism for us to explore these questions.
Results/Contributions

Social interactions play important roles in the modulation of behavior, physiology and, potentially, lifespan. Although longevity has been studied extensively in different model organisms, due to the complexity of social environments, the social modulation of aging remains poorly investigated. The present project used the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model to study lifespan and stress resistance under different social conditions. Our experiments first showed that social isolation increases fly lifespan, suggesting potential deleterious effect of social companions. Furthermore, we exposed flies to different aged social partners and found that living with old animals significantly reduced lifespan and stress resistance in young animals. In contrast, living with young animals increased old animal lifespan, although the effects were less robust. Overall, our results suggest that while social interaction can influence fly health, specific social partners may have more pronounced effects than others. This study provides new evidence that different social environments have significant impacts on animal physiology and longevity.

Keywords
Fruit fly, longevity, social interaction
References
1.

Contact Information
郭崇涵
thkuo@life.nthu.edu.tw