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Projekt Druckansicht

Evolution von Lerntypen und Verhaltenssyndromen bei Insekten: die Rolle der Variabilität von Umweltfaktoren und der Zuverlässigkeit von Information.

Antragstellerin Maartje Liefting, Ph.D.
Fachliche Zuordnung Biologie des Verhaltens und der Sinne
Evolution, Anthropologie
Förderung Förderung von 2017 bis 2022
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 386527848
 
Erstellungsjahr 2021

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

In this research project, I have set out to explore how predictability of information can drive the evolution of learning ability. Although the initially planned experimental set-up was unsuccessful, we did manage to demonstrate the existence of natural variation in learning ability in a wild population of Nasonia vitripennis parasitoid wasps. By exploring the search efficiency of strains with high versus low learning ability in different search scenarios in which information was more of less reliable, we were further able to research the ecological costs and benefits of learning ability. An important find is that when information reliably indicated host presence, this knowledge leads to shorter search times while it leads to costly misdirected behaviour if it is unreliable. The outcome of this trade-off is different for the different learning phenotypes that we have found to be present in a natural population of Nasonia vitripennis. Strains with high learning ability (i.e., swift formation of memory after a single positive associative experience) benefit more from the information learned during a prior experience than strains with low learning scores. Yet these high learning strains also pay a higher price if the readily learned information turns out to be unreliable. Strains for which a single prior experience does not readily lead to a stable association do not profit from the information when it is indicative of host presence, but they also do not suffer costs due to misdirected behaviour either. These results clearly demonstrate that the relationship between learning ability and fitness need not be linear, and insights form this research form an important step into explaining why directional selection towards more enhanced learning is not frequently observed in natural populations. Likely, as has been suggested before (Boogert et al., 2018), a form of stabilizing selection is more common and this should be addressed in future studies. More effort should be directed into studying variation in learning behaviour in the wild. This study is a step in the right direction; although still not set in a completely natural setting, we did consider strains from a natural population in a laboratory setting and present the wasps with an ecologically relevant scenario. I certainly hope these results will bridge the gap towards further testing these theories under natural conditions, because we still need to better understand the actual significance of learning in nature.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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