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Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior

Animals can alter their foraging behavior through associative learning, where an encounter with an essential resource (e.g., food or a reproductive opportunity) is associated with nearby environmental cues (e.g., volatiles). This can subsequently improve the animal’s foraging efficiency. However, wh...

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Autores principales: de Bruijn, Jessica A C, Vet, Louise E M, Smid, Hans M, de Boer, Jetske G
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8528537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690548
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arab066
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author de Bruijn, Jessica A C
Vet, Louise E M
Smid, Hans M
de Boer, Jetske G
author_facet de Bruijn, Jessica A C
Vet, Louise E M
Smid, Hans M
de Boer, Jetske G
author_sort de Bruijn, Jessica A C
collection PubMed
description Animals can alter their foraging behavior through associative learning, where an encounter with an essential resource (e.g., food or a reproductive opportunity) is associated with nearby environmental cues (e.g., volatiles). This can subsequently improve the animal’s foraging efficiency. However, when these associated cues are encountered again, the anticipated resource is not always present. Such an unrewarding experience, also called a memory-extinction experience, can change an animal’s response to the associated cues. Although some studies are available on the mechanisms of this process, they rarely focus on cues and rewards that are relevant in an animal’s natural habitat. In this study, we tested the effect of different types of ecologically relevant memory-extinction experiences on the conditioned plant volatile preferences of the parasitic wasp Cotesia glomerata that uses these cues to locate its caterpillar hosts. These extinction experiences consisted of contact with only host traces (frass and silk), contact with nonhost traces, or oviposition in a nonhost near host traces, on the conditioned plant species. Our results show that the lack of oviposition, after contacting host traces, led to the temporary alteration of the conditioned plant volatile preference in C. glomerata, but this effect was plant species-specific. These results provide novel insights into how ecologically relevant memory-extinction experiences can fine-tune an animal’s foraging behavior. This fine-tuning of learned behavior can be beneficial when the lack of finding a resource accurately predicts current, but not future foraging opportunities. Such continuous reevaluation of obtained information helps animals to prevent maladaptive foraging behavior.
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spelling pubmed-85285372021-10-21 Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior de Bruijn, Jessica A C Vet, Louise E M Smid, Hans M de Boer, Jetske G Behav Ecol Original Articles Animals can alter their foraging behavior through associative learning, where an encounter with an essential resource (e.g., food or a reproductive opportunity) is associated with nearby environmental cues (e.g., volatiles). This can subsequently improve the animal’s foraging efficiency. However, when these associated cues are encountered again, the anticipated resource is not always present. Such an unrewarding experience, also called a memory-extinction experience, can change an animal’s response to the associated cues. Although some studies are available on the mechanisms of this process, they rarely focus on cues and rewards that are relevant in an animal’s natural habitat. In this study, we tested the effect of different types of ecologically relevant memory-extinction experiences on the conditioned plant volatile preferences of the parasitic wasp Cotesia glomerata that uses these cues to locate its caterpillar hosts. These extinction experiences consisted of contact with only host traces (frass and silk), contact with nonhost traces, or oviposition in a nonhost near host traces, on the conditioned plant species. Our results show that the lack of oviposition, after contacting host traces, led to the temporary alteration of the conditioned plant volatile preference in C. glomerata, but this effect was plant species-specific. These results provide novel insights into how ecologically relevant memory-extinction experiences can fine-tune an animal’s foraging behavior. This fine-tuning of learned behavior can be beneficial when the lack of finding a resource accurately predicts current, but not future foraging opportunities. Such continuous reevaluation of obtained information helps animals to prevent maladaptive foraging behavior. Oxford University Press 2021-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8528537/ /pubmed/34690548 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arab066 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
de Bruijn, Jessica A C
Vet, Louise E M
Smid, Hans M
de Boer, Jetske G
Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title_full Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title_fullStr Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title_full_unstemmed Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title_short Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
title_sort memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8528537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690548
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arab066
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