No evidence of social learning in a socially roosting butterfly in an associative learning task.
Biol Lett
; 19(5): 20220490, 2023 05.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37194257
Insects may acquire social information by active communication and through inadvertent social cues. In a foraging setting, the latter may indicate the presence and quality of resources. Although social learning in foraging contexts is prevalent in eusocial species, this behaviour has been hypothesized to also exist between conspecifics in non-social species with sophisticated behaviours, including Heliconius butterflies. Heliconius are the only butterfly genus with active pollen feeding, a dietary innovation associated with a specialized, spatially faithful foraging behaviour known as trap-lining. Long-standing hypotheses suggest that Heliconius may acquire trap-line information by following experienced individuals. Indeed, Heliconius often aggregate in social roosts, which could act as 'information centres', and present conspecific following behaviour, enhancing opportunities for social learning. Here, we provide a direct test of social learning ability in Heliconius using an associative learning task in which naive individuals completed a colour preference test in the presence of demonstrators trained to feed randomly or with a strong colour preference. We found no evidence that Heliconius erato, which roost socially, used social information in this task. Combined with existing field studies, our results add to data which contradict the hypothesized role of social learning in Heliconius foraging behaviour.
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Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Borboletas
/
Aprendizado Social
Tipo de estudo:
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Animals
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Biol Lett
Assunto da revista:
BIOLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Brasil
País de publicação:
Reino Unido