CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Vespula germanica foragers return to a food source that has not been de-pleted.In this work we investigate how long wasps continue searching for afood source that is no longer available. We first trained wasps to feed on adish surrounded by four yellow cylinders, and then, during the testing phase,we removed the food, and recorded foragers behavior until wasps stoppedvisiting the array. Two groups received different treatments: one received onefeeding trial and the other three. Wasps trained with three consecutive trialssearched over the original array approximately three times longer than thosereceiving one. Furthermore, the number of hovers and landings over the ar-raywas significantly higher for wasps trained with three trials than for waspstrained with one. Finally, initial level of response (i.e. number of hovers andlandings in the first visit during the testing phase) was significantly higher inthe group with three trials than in the group with one. We discuss the biologi-calsignificance of memory extinction in these generalist wasps, in relation tothe level of uncertainty of the resources they exploit. The plasticity to extin-guishdifferently an association between a stimulus and a food resource couldbe one of the various behavioral mechanisms in V. germanica wasps that hadallowed the species to get successfully established in new areas of the world.

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