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Environmental adaptation, phenotypic plasticity, and associative learning in insects: the desert locust as a case study

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posted on 2023-06-09, 03:01 authored by Patricio M V Simões, Swidbert O Ott, Jeremy NivenJeremy Niven
The ability to learn and store information should be adapted to the environment in which animals operate to confer a selective advantage. Yet the relationship between learning, memory, and the environment is poorly understood, and further complicated by phenotypic plasticity caused by the very environment in which learning and memory need to operate. Many insect species show polyphenism, an extreme form of phenotypic plasticity, allowing them to occupy distinct environments by producing two or more alternative phenotypes. Yet how the learning and memories capabilities of these alternative phenotypes are adapted to their specific environments remains unknown for most polyphenic insect species. The desert locust can exist as one of two extreme phenotypes or phases, solitarious and gregarious. Recent studies of associative food–odor learning in this locust have shown that aversive but not appetitive learning differs between phases. Furthermore, switching from the solitarious to the gregarious phase (gregarization) prevents locusts acquiring new learned aversions, enabling them to convert an aversive memory formed in the solitarious phase to an appetitive one in the gregarious phase. This conversion provides a neuroecological mechanism that matches key changes in the behavioral environments of the two phases. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding the neural mechanisms that generate ecologically relevant behaviors and the interactions between different forms of behavioral plasticity.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Integrative and Comparative Biology

ISSN

1540-7063

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Issue

5

Volume

56

Page range

914-924

Department affiliated with

  • Evolution, Behaviour and Environment Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-09-22

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-09-22

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-09-21

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