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Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb
Rules of thumb are behavioral algorithms that approximate optimal behavior while lowering cognitive and sensory costs. One way to reduce these costs is by simplifying the representation of the environment: While the theoretically optimal behavior may depend on many environmental variables, a rule of...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37580527 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05220-3 |
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author | Madirolas, Gabriel Al-Asmar, Alid Gaouar, Lydia Marie-Louise, Leslie Garza-Enríquez, Andrea Rodríguez-Rada, Valentina Khona, Mikail Dal Bello, Martina Ratzke, Christoph Gore, Jeff Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso |
author_facet | Madirolas, Gabriel Al-Asmar, Alid Gaouar, Lydia Marie-Louise, Leslie Garza-Enríquez, Andrea Rodríguez-Rada, Valentina Khona, Mikail Dal Bello, Martina Ratzke, Christoph Gore, Jeff Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso |
author_sort | Madirolas, Gabriel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Rules of thumb are behavioral algorithms that approximate optimal behavior while lowering cognitive and sensory costs. One way to reduce these costs is by simplifying the representation of the environment: While the theoretically optimal behavior may depend on many environmental variables, a rule of thumb may use a smaller set of variables that performs reasonably well. Experimental proof of this simplification requires an exhaustive mapping of all relevant combinations of several environmental parameters, which we performed for Caenorhabditis elegans foraging by covering systematically combinations of food density (across 4 orders of magnitude) and food type (across 12 bacterial strains). We found that worms’ response is dominated by a single environmental variable: food density measured as number of bacteria per unit surface. They disregard other factors such as biomass content or bacterial strain. We also measured experimentally the impact on fitness of each type of food, determining that the rule is near-optimal and therefore constitutes a rule of thumb that leverages the most informative environmental variable. These results set the stage for further investigations into the underlying genetic and neural mechanisms governing this simplification process, and into its role in the evolution of decision-making strategies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10425387 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104253872023-08-16 Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb Madirolas, Gabriel Al-Asmar, Alid Gaouar, Lydia Marie-Louise, Leslie Garza-Enríquez, Andrea Rodríguez-Rada, Valentina Khona, Mikail Dal Bello, Martina Ratzke, Christoph Gore, Jeff Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Commun Biol Article Rules of thumb are behavioral algorithms that approximate optimal behavior while lowering cognitive and sensory costs. One way to reduce these costs is by simplifying the representation of the environment: While the theoretically optimal behavior may depend on many environmental variables, a rule of thumb may use a smaller set of variables that performs reasonably well. Experimental proof of this simplification requires an exhaustive mapping of all relevant combinations of several environmental parameters, which we performed for Caenorhabditis elegans foraging by covering systematically combinations of food density (across 4 orders of magnitude) and food type (across 12 bacterial strains). We found that worms’ response is dominated by a single environmental variable: food density measured as number of bacteria per unit surface. They disregard other factors such as biomass content or bacterial strain. We also measured experimentally the impact on fitness of each type of food, determining that the rule is near-optimal and therefore constitutes a rule of thumb that leverages the most informative environmental variable. These results set the stage for further investigations into the underlying genetic and neural mechanisms governing this simplification process, and into its role in the evolution of decision-making strategies. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10425387/ /pubmed/37580527 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05220-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Madirolas, Gabriel Al-Asmar, Alid Gaouar, Lydia Marie-Louise, Leslie Garza-Enríquez, Andrea Rodríguez-Rada, Valentina Khona, Mikail Dal Bello, Martina Ratzke, Christoph Gore, Jeff Pérez-Escudero, Alfonso Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title | Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title_full | Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title_fullStr | Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title_full_unstemmed | Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title_short | Caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
title_sort | caenorhabditis elegans foraging patterns follow a simple rule of thumb |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37580527 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05220-3 |
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