Testing the habituation assumption underlying models of parasitoid foraging behavior
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Abstract
Habituation, a form of non-associative learning, has several well-defined characteristics that apply to a wide range of physiological and behavioral responses in many organisms. In classic patch time allocation models, habituation is considered to be a major mechanistic component of parasitoid behavioral strategies. However, parasitoid behavioral responses to host cues have not previously been tested for the known, specific characteristics of habituation. Here, we tested whether the foraging behavior of the egg parasitoid Trissolcus basalis shows specific characteristics of habituation in response to consecutive encounters with patches of host (Nezara viridula) chemical contact cues (footprints), in particular: (i) a training interval-dependent decline in response intensity, and (ii) a training interval dependent recovery of the response. As would be expected of a habituated response, wasps trained at higher frequencies decreased their behavioral response to host footprints more quickly and to a greater degree than those trained at low frequencies, and subsequently showed a more rapid, although partial, recovery of their behavioral response to host footprints. In contrast to previously studied forms of parasitoid memory (i.e., from associative learning), this putative habituation learning could not be blocked by cold anesthesia, ingestion of an ATPase inhibitor, or ingestion of a protein synthesis inhibitor. Our study provides support for the assumption that diminishing responses of parasitoids to chemical indicators of host presence constitutes habituation as opposed to sensory fatigue, and may indicate that the underlying mechanisms differ from other, better-studied forms of parasitoid learning.
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2016. Testing the habituation assumption underlying models of parasitoid foraging behavior. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2555v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2555v1note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
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This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Paul K Abram conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Antonino Cusumano conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Katrina Abram conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Stefano Colazza conceived and designed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ezio Peri conceived and designed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The raw data has been supplied as a supplementary file.
Funding
P.K.A. was supported by a Fonds de Recherche du Québec/Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science International Internship, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postgraduate scholarship. This research supported in part by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 of the European Union as part of the project “Impact of invasive alien true bug species in native trophic webs” – INVASIoN (GA 690952). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
