INVESTIGADORES
BUTELER Micaela
artículos
Título:
Foraging experience modulates response to aversive odour cues in social wasps
Autor/es:
BELEN YOSSEN; BUTELER, MICAELA; LOZADA, MARIANA
Revista:
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
Editorial:
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
Referencias:
Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2020 vol. 164 p. 113 - 122
ISSN:
0003-3472
Resumen:
Experience can modify how animals respond to relevant stimuli from their environment, for example, through associative learning. In particular, odour stimuli play a central role in foraging by influencing decision-making. Numerous studies showed that odours can acquire relevance for the animal by becoming associated with food after appetitive experience. Therefore, studying to what extent learning can modulate the behavioural response to olfactory stimuli is essential to improve our understanding about the role of experience in food exploitation in nature. Here, we evaluated whether foraging experience can modulate the response of Vespula germanica, a food generalist and opportunistic eusocial wasp, towards an aversive odour. Through field experiments, we evaluated the response of naïve and experienced wasps towards the odour under different scenarios, to also examine how these changes affect foraging decisions. Both naïve wasps and wasps that had foraging experience in the absence of the odour were not attracted to the odour alone and avoided meat sources paired with this cue. However, wasps that had foraging experience with the odour showed an opposite behavioural pattern; they preferred meat sources with the odour and were equally attracted to the odours as to the meat. The behavioural repertoire elicited by the odour (i.e., approaches, landings and search behaviour) after experience with it indicates that change in the response was due to associative learning, leading the odour to become attractive. Interestingly, the change in the odour´s valence occurred after one collecting experience and three to five visits promoted long-term memory of the odour. In conclusion, our results show that spontaneous responses to odours can be modulated by experience and provide new insights about learning and memory abilities of social wasps in relation to olfactory cues.