The Evolution and Ecology of Learning and Social Behaviour in Insects

Abstract

<p>Animals utilize information about their environments in order to adaptively modify behaviour. Such information may come from individual experience or from social sources, both of which have costs and benefits to the animal. Here I first show benefits of individual learning with respect to foraging performance, a good proxy of fitness, in bumblebees in a naturalistic setting. Second, I show that despite fitness costs associated with learning, fruit flies do not modify their investment in learning ability due to environmental complexity of larval foraging environment. Third, I show that fruit fly larvae utilize social information in their foraging decisions, including social learning, despite increased competition costs. Fourth, I show that adult fruit flies also use the presence of larvae as a source of social information to find suitable food patches. Finally, I show that larvae spontaneously form small foraging aggregations, one benefit of which may be an improved ability to dig and burrow into the surface of the food. I discuss the costs and benefits of both individual and social learning, as well as the potential for insect model systems in future studies of sociality and learning.</p>