Spatial learning in kissing bugs: appetitive and aversive conditioning

CANO, A; BARROZO, RB; ROLDAN, N; MINOLI, S; MAGALLANES, A

Montevideo

Congreso; XII Congress International Society for Neuroethology; 2016

Innate responses in animals can bemodulated by experience. However, not much is known aboutthe modulation of this behavior by non-associative and associative cognitiveprocesses. Here we present evidences of thecognitive capacities of Rhodnius prolixuslarvae in an aversive and appetitive context under different conditioningparadigms.Insects were trained in anexperimental arena which has two surfaces, one smooth and the other onewrinkled. When bugs walked in the side that was chosen as punished, they suffereda vibration which made them escape to the other side. After this we tested theinsects: we left them in the middle of the flask and evaluated which side they preferred.In another experiment we worked with the same arena. In this case one of thesides was chosen as rewarded: it contained an artificial feeder with anappetitive solution. The test was made like in the previous experiment.Insects don´t show an innatepreference for any of the surfaces. However, when they were trained with theaversive conditioning, they showed a preference for the side of the arena thatwas not punished. Preliminary results of the second experiment showed that thebugs preferred the rewarded side of the arena.We demonstrated here that both withan aversive and appetitive conditioning, the bugs are able to learn andmemorize information of the spatial context. The behavior of these insects isplastic, allowing them to cope with changes in the environment