Drosophila melanogaster larvae make nutritional choices that minimize developmental time.

Organisms from slime moulds to humans carefully regulate their macronutrient intake to optimize a wide range of life history characters including survival, stress resistance, and reproductive success. However, life history characters often differ in their response to nutrition, forcing organisms to make foraging decisions while balancing the trade-offs between these effects. To date, we have a limited understanding of how the nutritional environment shapes the relationship between life history characters and foraging decisions.