Jump to content

Insect cognition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A neuron (green and white) in an insect brain (blue)

Insect cognition describes the mental capacities and study of those capacities in insects. The field developed from comparative psychology where early studies focused more on animal behavior.[1] Researchers have examined insect cognition in bees, fruit flies, and wasps.[2][3]  

Research questions consist of experiments aimed to evaluate insects abilities such as perception,[4] emotions[1][5] attention,[3] memory (wasp multiple nest),[1] spatial cognition,[1][6] tools use,[3] problem solving,[3] and concepts.[3][7] Unlike in animal behavior the concept of group cognition plays a big part in insect studies.[7][8][9] It is hypothesized some insect classes like ants and bees think with a group cognition to function within their societies;[8][9] more recent studies show that individual cognition exists and plays a role in overall group cognitive task.[5]

Insect cognition experiments have been more prevalent in the past decade than prior.[3] It is logical for the understanding of cognitive capacities as adaptations to differing ecological niches under the Cognitive faculty by species when analyzing behaviors, this means viewing behaviors as adaptations to an individual's environment and not weighing them more advanced when compared to other different individuals.[10]

Insect foraging cognition

[edit]
Insects foraging on a yellow flower

Insects inhabit many diverse and complex environments within which they must find food. Cognition shapes how an insect comes to find its food. The particular cognitive abilities used by insects in finding food has been the focus of much scientific inquiry.[11] The social insects are often study subjects and much has been discovered about the intelligence of insects by investigating the abilities of bee species.[12][3] Fruit flies are also common study subjects.[13]

Learning and memory

[edit]

Learning biases

[edit]

Through learning, insects can increase their foraging efficiency, decreasing the time spent searching for food which allows for more time and energy to be invested in other fitness related activities, such as searching for mates or hosts.[14] Depending on the ecology of the insect, certain cues may be used to learn in identifying food sources more quickly. Over evolutionary time, insects may develop evolved learning biases that reflect the food source they feed on.[15]

Biases in learning allow insects to quickly associate relevant features of the environment that are related to food. For example, bees have an unlearned preference for radiating and symmetric patterns — common features of natural flowers bees forage on.[16] Bees that have no foraging experience tend to have an unlearned preference for the colours that an experienced forager would learn faster. These colours tend to be those of highly rewarding flowers in that particular environment.[17]

Time-place learning

[edit]

In addition to more typical cues like color and odor, insects are able to use time as a foraging cue.[18] Time is a particularly important cue for pollinators. Pollinators forage on flowers which tend to vary predictably in time and space, depending on the flower species, pollinators can learn the timing of blooming of flower species to develop more efficient foraging routes. Bees learn at which times and in which areas sites are rewarding and change their preference for particular sites based on the time of day.[19]

These time-based preferences have been shown to be tied to a circadian clock in some insects. In the absence of external cues honeybees will still show a shift in preference for a reward depending on time strongly implicating an internal time-keeping mechanism, i.e. the circadian clock, in modulating the learned preference.[18]

Moreover, not only can bees remember when a particular site is rewarding but they can also remember at what times multiple different sites are profitable.[19] Certain butterfly species also show evidence for time-place learning due to their trap-line foraging behaviour.[20] This is when an animal consistently visits the same foraging sites in a sequential manner across multiple days and is thought to be suggestive of a time-place learning ability.

Innovation capacity

[edit]
A bumblebee with experience in the string-pulling task pulls the string to reach an artificial blue flower filled with sugar solution[21]

Insects are also capable of behavioral innovations. Innovation is defined as the creation of a new or modified learned behavior not previously found in the population.[22] Innovative abilities can be experimentally studied in insects through the use of problem solving tasks.[23] When presented with a string-pulling task, many bumblebees cannot solve the task, but a few can innovate the solution.[21]

Those that initially could not solve the task can learn to solve it by observing an innovator bee solving the task. These learned behaviors can then spread culturally through bee populations.[21] More recent studies in insects have begun to look at what traits (e.g. exploratory tendency) predict the propensity for an individual insect to be an innovator.[24]

Social aspects of insect foraging

[edit]

Social learning of foraging sites

[edit]

Insects can learn about foraging sites through observation or interaction with other individuals, termed social learning. This has been demonstrated in bumblebees. Bumblebees become attracted to rewarding flowers more quickly if they are occupied by other bumblebees and more quickly learn to associate that flower species with reward.[25] Seeing a conspecific on a flower enhances preferences for flowers of that type. Additionally, bumblebees will rely more on social cues when a task is difficult compared to when a task is simple.[26]

Ants will show conspecifics food sites they have discovered in a process called tandem running. This is considered to be a rare instance of teaching, a specialized form of social learning, in the animal kingdom.[27] Teaching involves consistent interactions between a tutor and a pupil and the tutor typically incurs some sort of cost in order to transmit the relevant information to the pupil. In the case of tandem running the ant is temporarily decreasing its own foraging efficiency in order to demonstrate to the pupil the location of a foraging site. This concept in humans would be similar to the apprenticeship system.

Evidence for Cumulative culture

[edit]

Studies in bumblebees have provided evidence that some insects show the beginnings of cumulative culture through the act of refining existing behaviours into more efficient forms. Bumblebees are able to improve upon a task where they must pull a ball to a particular location, a previously socially learned behaviour, by using a more optimal route compared to the route that their demonstrator used.[28] This demonstration of refinement of a previously observed existing behaviour could be considered a rudimentary form of cumulative culture, although this is a highly controversial idea. It is important to say that true cumulative culture has been difficult to show in insects and indeed, in all species. This would require culture accumulating over generations to the point where no single individual could independently generate the entire behaviour.[29]

Neural basis of insect foraging

[edit]

Role of mushroom bodies

[edit]
A diagram of a fruit fly mushroom body

One important and highly studied brain region involved in insect foraging are the mushroom bodies, a structure implicated in insect learning and memory abilities. The mushroom body consists of two large stalks called peduncles which have cup-shaped projections on their ends called calyces. The role of the mushroom bodies is in sensory integration and associative learning.[30] They allow the insect to pair sensory information and reward.[30]

Experiments where the function of the mushroom bodies are impaired through ablation find that organisms are behaviourally normal but have impaired learning. Flies with impaired mushroom bodies cannot form an odour association[31] and cockroaches with impaired mushroom bodies cannot make use of spatial information to form memories about locations.[32] Electrophysiological underpinnings of the cognition in different parts of the insect brain can be studied by various techniques including in vivo recordings from these parts of the insect brain.

Mushroom body plasticity

[edit]

Mushroom bodies can change in size throughout the lifespan of an insect. There is evidence these changes are related to the onset of foraging as well as the experience of foraging. In some Hymenoptera mushroom bodies increase in size when nurses become foragers and begin to forage for the colony.[33]

Young bees begin as nurses tending to the feeding and sanitation of the hive's larvae. As a bee ages it undergoes a shift in tasks from nurse to forager, leaving the hive to collect pollen. This shift in job leads to changes in gene expression within the brain which are associated with an increase in mushroom body size.[33]

Some butterflies have also been shown to undergo an experience-dependent increase in mushroom body size.[34] The period of greatest increase in brain size typically is associated with a period of learning through experiences with foraging demonstrating the importance of this structure in insect foraging cognition.

Mushroom body evolution

[edit]

Multiple insect taxa have independently evolved larger mushroom bodies. The spatial cognition demands of foraging has been implicated in cases where more sophisticated mushroom bodies have evolved.[35] Cockroaches and bees, which are in different orders, both forage over a large area and make use of spatial information to return to foraging sites and central places which likely explains their larger mushroom bodies.[36] Contrast this with a dipteran such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which has relatively small mushroom bodies and less complex spatial learning demands.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d Burkhardt RW (1987). "The Journal of Animal Behavior and the early history of animal behavior studies in America". Journal of Comparative Psychology. 101 (3): 223–230. doi:10.1037/0735-7036.101.3.223. ISSN 0735-7036.
  2. ^ Giurfa M (2014). "Cognition with few neurons: higher-order learning in insects". Trends in Neurosciences. 36 (5): 1 285–294. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2012.12.011. PMID 23375772. S2CID 7908013.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Perry CJ, Barron AB, Chittka L (2017). "The frontiers of insect cognition". Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 16: 111–118. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.05.011. ISSN 2352-1546. S2CID 53184195.
  4. ^ Giurfa M, Menzel R (1997). "Insect visual perception: complex abilities of simple nervous systems". Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 7 (4): 505–513. doi:10.1016/S0959-4388(97)80030-X. PMID 9287201. S2CID 7483311.
  5. ^ a b Baracchi D, Lihoreau M, Giurfa M (August 2017). "Do Insects Have Emotions? Some Insights from Bumble Bees". Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 11: 157. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00157. PMC 5572325. PMID 28878636.
  6. ^ Blackawton PS, Airzee S, Allen A, Baker S, Berrow A, Blair C, et al. (April 2011). "Blackawton bees". Biology Letters. 7 (2): 168–72. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2010.1056. PMC 3061190. PMID 21177694.
  7. ^ a b Passino KM, Seeley TD, Visscher PK (2007-09-19). "Swarm cognition in honey bees". Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 62 (3): 401–414. doi:10.1007/s00265-007-0468-1. ISSN 0340-5443. S2CID 1386639.
  8. ^ a b Wilson RA (September 2001). "Group-Level Cognition". Philosophy of Science. 68 (S3): S262–S273. doi:10.1086/392914. ISSN 0031-8248. S2CID 144160534.
  9. ^ a b Feinerman O, Korman A (January 2017). "Individual versus collective cognition in social insects". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 220 (Pt 1): 73–82. arXiv:1701.05080. Bibcode:2017arXiv170105080F. doi:10.1242/jeb.143891. PMC 5226334. PMID 28057830.
  10. ^ Giurfa M (May 2013). "Cognition with few neurons: higher-order learning in insects". Trends in Neurosciences. 36 (5): 285–94. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2012.12.011. PMID 23375772. S2CID 7908013.
  11. ^ Jones PL, Agrawal AA (January 2017). "Learning in Insect Pollinators and Herbivores". Annual Review of Entomology. 62 (1): 53–71. doi:10.1146/annurev-ento-031616-034903. PMID 27813668.
  12. ^ "Bees Have Small Brains But Big Ideas". Scientific American. doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0514-10b.
  13. ^ Maimon G. "Could Fruit Flies Reveal the Hidden Mechanisms of the Mind?". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  14. ^ Paur, Jennifer; Gray, David A. (2011-10-01). "Individual consistency, learning and memory in a parasitoid fly, Ormia ochracea". Animal Behaviour. 82 (4): 825–830. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.07.017. ISSN 0003-3472.
  15. ^ Lehrer M, Horridge GA, Zhang SW, Gadagkar R (1995-01-30). "Shape vision in bees: innate preference for flower-like patterns" (PDF). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 347 (1320): 123–137. Bibcode:1995RSPTB.347..123L. doi:10.1098/rstb.1995.0017. hdl:1885/117351. ISSN 0962-8436.
  16. ^ Lehrer M, Horridge GA, Zhang SW, Gadagkar R (1995-01-30). "Shape vision in bees: innate preference for flower-like patterns" (PDF). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 347 (1320): 123–137. Bibcode:1995RSPTB.347..123L. doi:10.1098/rstb.1995.0017. hdl:1885/117351. ISSN 0962-8436.
  17. ^ Giurfa M, Nunez J, Chittka L, Menzel R (September 1995). "Colour preferences of flower-naive honeybees". Journal of Comparative Physiology A. 177 (3). doi:10.1007/BF00192415. ISSN 0340-7594. S2CID 36437846.
  18. ^ a b Zhang S, Schwarz S, Pahl M, Zhu H, Tautz J (November 2006). "Honeybee memory: A honeybee knows what to do and when". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 209 (Pt 22): 4420–8. doi:10.1242/jeb.02522. PMID 17079712. S2CID 262120047.
  19. ^ a b Pahl M, Zhu H, Pix W, Tautz J, Zhang S (October 2007). "Circadian timed episodic-like memory - a bee knows what to do when, and also where". The Journal of Experimental Biology. 210 (Pt 20): 3559–67. doi:10.1242/jeb.005488. hdl:1885/18210. PMID 17921157.
  20. ^ Gilbert, Lawrence E. Raven, Peter H. (1980). Coevolution of animals and plants : Symposium V, First International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology, Boulder, Colorado, August 1973. University of Texas. ISBN 0-292-71056-9. OCLC 6511746.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ a b c Alem S, Perry CJ, Zhu X, Loukola OJ, Ingraham T, Søvik E, Chittka L (October 2016). Louis M (ed.). "Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an Insect". PLOS Biology. 14 (10): e1002564. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564. PMC 5049772. PMID 27701411.
  22. ^ Reader SM, Laland KN (2003-09-25). "Animal Innovation: An Introduction". Animal Innovation. Oxford University Press. pp. 3–36. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198526223.003.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-852622-3.
  23. ^ Griffin AS, Guez D (November 2014). "Innovation and problem solving: a review of common mechanisms". Behavioural Processes. 109 Pt B: 121–34. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2014.08.027. PMID 25245306. S2CID 28550381.
  24. ^ Collado MÁ, Menzel R, Sol D, Bartomeus I (2019-12-23). "Innovation in solitary bees is driven by exploration, shyness and activity levels". doi:10.1101/2019.12.23.884619. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  25. ^ Leadbeater E, Chittka L (2007-08-06). "The dynamics of social learning in an insect model, the bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)". Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. 61 (11): 1789–1796. doi:10.1007/s00265-007-0412-4. ISSN 0340-5443. S2CID 569654.
  26. ^ Baracchi D, Vasas V, Jamshed Iqbal S, Alem S (2018-01-13). Papaj D (ed.). "Foraging bumblebees use social cues more when the task is difficult". Behavioral Ecology. 29 (1): 186–192. doi:10.1093/beheco/arx143. ISSN 1045-2249.
  27. ^ Franks NR, Richardson T (January 2006). "Teaching in tandem-running ants". Nature. 439 (7073): 153. Bibcode:2006Natur.439..153F. doi:10.1038/439153a. PMID 16407943.
  28. ^ Loukola OJ, Perry CJ, Coscos L, Chittka L (February 2017). "Bumblebees show cognitive flexibility by improving on an observed complex behavior". Science. 355 (6327): 833–836. Bibcode:2017Sci...355..833L. doi:10.1126/science.aag2360. PMID 28232576. S2CID 206651162.
  29. ^ Schofield DP, McGrew WC, Takahashi A, Hirata S (December 2017). "Cumulative culture in nonhumans: overlooked findings from Japanese monkeys?". Primates. 59 (1): 113–122. Bibcode:2017Sci...355..833L. doi:10.1007/s10329-017-0642-7. PMC 5843669. PMID 29282581.
  30. ^ a b Heisenberg M (April 2003). "Mushroom body memoir: from maps to models". Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 4 (4): 266–75. doi:10.1038/nrn1074. PMID 12671643. S2CID 5038386.
  31. ^ de Belle JS, Heisenberg M (February 1994). "Associative odor learning in Drosophila abolished by chemical ablation of mushroom bodies". Science. 263 (5147): 692–5. Bibcode:1994Sci...263..692D. doi:10.1126/science.8303280. PMID 8303280.
  32. ^ Mizunami M, Weibrecht JM, Strausfeld NJ (1998-12-28). "Mushroom bodies of the cockroach: Their participation in place memory". The Journal of Comparative Neurology. 402 (4): 520–537. doi:10.1002/(sici)1096-9861(19981228)402:4<520::aid-cne6>3.0.co;2-k. ISSN 0021-9967. PMID 9862324. S2CID 44384958.
  33. ^ a b Whitfield CW, Cziko AM, Robinson GE (October 2003). "Gene expression profiles in the brain predict behavior in individual honey bees". Science. 302 (5643): 296–9. Bibcode:2003Sci...302..296W. doi:10.1126/science.1086807. PMID 14551438. S2CID 30489284.
  34. ^ Montgomery SH, Merrill RM, Ott SR (June 2016). "Brain composition in Heliconius butterflies, posteclosion growth and experience-dependent neuropil plasticity". The Journal of Comparative Neurology. 524 (9): 1747–69. doi:10.1002/cne.23993. hdl:2381/36988. PMID 26918905. S2CID 20938927.
  35. ^ Farris SM, Schulmeister S (March 2011). "Parasitoidism, not sociality, is associated with the evolution of elaborate mushroom bodies in the brains of hymenopteran insects". Proceedings. Biological Sciences. 278 (1707): 940–51. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2161. PMC 3049053. PMID 21068044.
  36. ^ Farris SM, Van Dyke JW (December 2015). "Evolution and function of the insect mushroom bodies: contributions from comparative and model systems studies". Current Opinion in Insect Science. 12: 19–25. doi:10.1016/j.cois.2015.08.006.

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Insect_cognition&oldid=1247269118"