Authors: Mareike Koppik Thomas S Hoffmeister Sven Brunkhorst Melanie Kieß Andra Thiel
Publish Date: 2014/12/19
Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 593-604
Abstract
The ability to learn is key to behavioral adaptation to changing environments Yet learning rate and memory retention can vary greatly across or even within species While interspecific differences have been attributed to ecological context or life history constraints intraspecific variability in learning behavior is rarely studied and more often ignored inferences of the cognitive abilities of a species are most of the time made from experiments using individuals of a single population Here we show that learning of hostassociated cues in the parasitic wasp Nasonia vitripennis Walker Hymenoptera Pteromalidae shows considerable interpopulation variability which is at least partly genetically determined The strengths of the learning response differed predictably between populations and also varied with the rewarding stimulus We tested memory retention in a genetically diverse strain and in an isofemale line bearing a low genetic variability In addition we compared our findings with published studies on a third strain using a metaanalytical approach Our findings suggest that all three strains differ in memory formation from each other We conclude that even though the associative learning of host cues is most likely under strong natural selection in parasitoid wasps considerable genetic variability is maintained at the population as well as at the species level in N vitripennisWe thank H M Smid and B A Pannebakker for sharing the AsymCX and the HVRx strains with us respectively and L Rogge for assistance with the olfactometer tests We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript This study was funded by the Central Research Development Fund University of Bremen Grant 02/125/10 to AT
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