The influence of past experience on wasp choice related to foraging behavior

SABRINA MOREYRA; PAOLA D´ADAMO; MARIANA LOZADA

INSECT SCIENCE

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2014

1672-9609

Memory has been little studied in social wasps. Vespula germanica (Fab.) (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) frequently revisits non-depleted food sources, making several trips between the resource and the nest. In this study we analyzed this re-locating behavior in order to evaluate whether this species is capable of remembering an established association after one hour. To this end, we trained wasps to feed from an array which consisted of four yellow cylinders and four identical dishes, one of which contained food. After training, the experimental array was removed completely, and one hour later, the array was set up once again in the same location, but this time two baited feeders were put in place, one at the original feeding site and the other opposite the first. We recorded the proportion of returning foragers, and their choice of feeder, after either one or four feeding trials. After one hour, a high proportion of wasps returned to the experimental area: 78% trained with four feeding trials, and 65% trained with one. Furthermore, during the testing phase, wasps trained with four feeding trials collected food from the previously learned feeder significantly more frequently than from the non-learned one (p