Insightful behaviour in arthropods?

Behaviour ◽

10.1163/1568539x-bja10077 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Fernando G. Soley ◽

Rafael Lucas Rodríguez ◽

Gerlinde Höbel ◽

William G. Eberhard

Keyword(s):

Natural Selection ◽

Learning Abilities ◽

Random Chance ◽

Innate Behaviour ◽

Behaviour Learning

Abstract Arthropod behaviour is usually explained through ‘hard-wired’ motor routines and learning abilities that have been favoured by natural selection. We describe observations in which two arthropods solved rare and perhaps completely novel problems, and consider four possible explanations for their behaviours: (i) the behaviour was a pre-programmed motor routine evolved to solve this particular problem, or evolved for other functions but pre-programmed to be recruited for this function under certain conditions; (ii) it was learned previously; (iii) it resulted by chance; or (iv) it was the result of insightful behaviour. Pre-programmed solutions can be favoured by natural selection if they provide solutions to common or crucial problems. Given the apparent rarity of the problems that these animals solved, the solutions they employed are unlikely to represent innate behaviour. Learning and random chance seem unlikely, although we cannot rule them out completely. Possibly these animals employed some degree of insight.

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Motoo Kimura. 13 November 1924—13 November 1994

Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society ◽

10.1098/rsbm.1997.0014 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

pp. 255-265 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

James F. Crow

Keyword(s):

Population Genetics ◽

Natural Selection ◽

Neutral Theory ◽

Random Chance ◽

Evolutionary Changes ◽

Sewall Wright ◽

Theoretical Population ◽

Theoretical Population Genetics

Motoo Kimura's research contributions can be divided into two parts. The first is a series of papers on theoretical population genetics, the quality and quantity of which place him as the successor to the great trinity, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright. The second is his neutral theory, the idea that the bulk of molecular evolutionary changes are driven by mutation and random chance, rather than by natural selection. The neutral theory brought him fame far beyond the confines of population genetics, and has made the name Motoo Kimura well-known to evolutionary biologists. (Motoo is pronounced ‘Mo-toe’, not ‘Mo-two’. By repeating the letter O, Kimura sought to indicate that this syllable was to be protracted. Unfortunately, rather than producing the desired effect, this more often led to mispronunciation.)

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Differences in Individual Learning Between Group-Foraging and Territorial Zenaida Doves

Behaviour ◽

10.1163/156853996x00369 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 133 (15-16) ◽

pp. 1197-1207 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Louis Lefebvre ◽

Pascal Carlier

Keyword(s):

Natural Selection ◽

Foraging Ecology ◽

Group Living ◽

Columba Livia ◽

Group Foraging ◽

Learning Differences ◽

Learning Abilities ◽

General Process ◽

Social Tasks ◽

Reward Contingencies

AbstractAdaptive views of learning predict that natural selection should lead to differences in specialized learning abilities between animals that face different ecological pressures. Group-living is thought to favour social learning, but previous comparative work suggests that differences between gregarious feral pigeons (Columba livia) and territorial Zenaida doves (Zenaida aurita) exceed the specialized effect on social tasks predicted by the adaptive hypothesis. In this paper, we show that group-foraging Zenaida doves from Barbados learn an individual shaping task more quickly than territorial Zenaida doves from a site 9 km away. These results suggest that the scramble competition associated with group-foraging favours several types of leaming, both social and non-social, and that its effects are more wide-ranging than previously thought. Since genetic isolation between Zenaida dove populations is highly unlikely, the results also suggest that differences in foraging ecology may lead to different learned responses to local reward contingencies as well as natural selection for different genotypes affecting learning. In some cases, the standard comparative prediction of ecologically-correlated learning differences may therefore not distinguish between adaptive specialization and general process theories.

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