scholarly journals Wolbachia manipulate fitness benefits of olfactory associative learning in a parasitoid wasp

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Kishani Farahani ◽  
Ahmad Ashouri ◽  
Pouria Abroon ◽  
Jean-Sebastien Pierre ◽  
Joan van Baaren
Keyword(s):  
Associative Learning ◽  
Life History Traits ◽  
Memory Span ◽  
Parasitoid Wasp ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Aversive Learning ◽  
Fitness Costs ◽  
Trichogramma Brassicae ◽  
Fitness Benefits

Upon encountering a host, a female parasitoid wasp has to decide whether to learn positive or negative cues related to a host. The optimal female decision will depend on the fitness costs and benefits of learned stimuli. Reward quality is positively related to the rate of behavioral acquisition in processes such as associative learning. Wolbachia, an endosymbiotic bacterium, often plays an impressive role in the manipulation of its arthropod host's biology. Here we studied the responses of two natural Wolbachia infected/uninfected Trichogramma brassicae populations to theoretically high- and low- reward values during a conditioning process and the consequences of their responses in terms of memory duration. According to our results, uninfected wasps showed an attraction response to high value rewards, but showed aversive learning in response to low value rewards. Memory span of uninfected wasps after conditioning by low-value rewards was significantly shorter compared to high-value rewards. As our results revealed, responses to high quality hosts will bring more benefits (bigger size, increased fecundity and enhanced survival) compared to low-quality hosts for uninfected wasps. Infected wasps were attracted to conditioned stimuli with the same memory duration after conditioning by both types of hosts. This was linked to the fact that parasitoids emerging from both types of hosts present the same life-history traits. Therefore, these hosts represent the same quality reward for infected wasps. According to obtained results it can be concluded that Wolbachia manipulates the learning ability of its host resulting in the wasp responding to all reward values similarly.

scholarly journals The Mystery of Symbolic Culture: What fitness costs? What fitness benefits?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Baptiste André ◽  
Nicolas Baumard ◽  
Pascal Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Fitness Costs ◽  
Fitness Benefits

In contrast to language or technology, many “symbolic” cultural phenomena do not seem to confer immediate fitness benefits. Standard approaches to cultural evolution in this domain focus on the recipients or consumers, which does not explain why these phenomena emerge. As a solution, we propose to consider the fitness costs and benefits incurred in producing behaviors or information that become widespread in a social group. Taking the producers’ perspective helps explain otherwise puzzling features of many kinds of cultural phenomena, such as artistic activities, sports, religious representations, or even moralistic norms. Considering the producers’ as well as the consumers’ benefits is crucial to generating precise hypotheses about the psychological adaptations that underpin cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Wolbachia manipulates host pre-imaginal learning in a parasitoid wasp

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pouria Abroon ◽  
Ahmad Ashori ◽  
Anne Duplouy ◽  
Hossein Kishani Farahani
Keyword(s):  
Host Species ◽  
Host Preference ◽  
Parasitoid Wasp ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Trichogramma Brassicae ◽  
Wolbachia Pipientis ◽  
Lepidoptera Pyralidae ◽  
Predatory Insects ◽  
Evolutionary Consequences

AbstractThe Hopkin’s host-selection principle (HHSP) suggests that organisms at higher trophic levels demonstrate a preference for the host species on which they developed during larval stage. Although investigated in many herbivorous and predatory insects, the HHSP has, to our knowledge, never been tested in the context of insects hosting selfish endosymbiotic passengers such as the maternally inherited bacterium Wolbachia pipientis. Here, we investigate the effect of Wolbachia infection on host pre-imaginal learning in the parasitoid wasp Trichogramma brassicae (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae). We compare host-choice in Wolbachia-infected and uninfected adult female parasitoids after rearing them on two different Lepidopteran hosts, namely the flour moth Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) or the grain moth Sitotroga cerealella (Lep.: Gelechiidae). We show that in T. brassicae, Wolbachia affect the pre-imaginal learning ability of female wasps. Wolbachia infected wasps do not show any host preference and easily switch hosts in the laboratory, while uninfected wasps significantly prefer to lay eggs on the host species they developed on. We discuss how the facilitation of a generalist strategy by Wolbachia may allow T. brassicae to escape intraspecific competition with their uninfected counterparts, and may have important evolutionary consequences for the host and its symbionts.

scholarly journals No sex differences in learning in wild bumblebees

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Muth ◽  
Amber D Tripodi ◽  
Rene Bonilla ◽  
James P Strange ◽  
Anne S Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Associative Learning ◽  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Comparative Cognition ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Interspecific Variation ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Learning Performance ◽  
Males And Females

Abstract Females and males often face different sources of selection, resulting in dimorphism in morphological, physiological, and even cognitive traits. Sex differences are often studied in respect to spatial cognition, yet the different ecological roles of males and females might shape cognition in multiple ways. For example, in dietary generalist bumblebees (Bombus), the ability to learn associations is critical to female workers, who face informationally rich foraging scenarios as they collect nectar and pollen from thousands of flowers over a period of weeks to months to feed the colony. While male bumblebees likely need to learn associations as well, they only forage for themselves while searching for potential mates. It is thus less clear whether foraging males would benefit from the same associative learning performance as foraging females. In this system, as in others, cognitive performance is typically studied in lab-reared animals under captive conditions, which may not be representative of patterns in the wild. In the first test of sex and species differences in cognition using wild bumblebees, we compared the performance of Bombus vancouverensis nearcticus (formerly bifarius) and Bombus vosnesenskii of both sexes on an associative learning task at Sierra Nevada (CA) field sites. Across both species, we found that males and females did not differ in their ability to learn, although males were slower to respond to the sucrose reward. These results offer the first evidence from natural populations that male bumblebees may be equally as able to learn associations as females, supporting findings from captive colonies of commercial bees. The observed interspecific variation in learning ability opens the door to using the Bombus system to test hypotheses about comparative cognition.

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