Catalog Learning: Carabid Beetles Learn to Manipulate with Innate Coherent Behavioral Patterns

Abstract

Abstract:One of the most fascinating problems in comparative psychology is how learning contributes to solving specific functional problems in animal life, and which forms of learning our species shares with non-human animals. Simulating a natural situation of territorial conflicts between predatory carabids and red wood ants in field and laboratory experiments, we have revealed a relatively simple and quite natural form of learning that has been overlooked. We call it catalog learning, the name we give to the ability of animals to establish associations between stimuli and coherent behavioral patterns (patterns consist of elementary motor acts that have a fixed order). Instead of budgeting their motor acts gradually, from chaotic to rational sequences in order to learn something new, which is characteristic for a conditioning response, animals seem to be "cataloguing" their repertoire of innate coherent behavioral patterns in order to optimize their response to a certain repetitive event. This form of learning can be described as "stimulus-pattern" learning. In our experiments four "wild" carabid species, whose cognitive abilities have never been studied before, modified their behavior in a rather natural manner in order to avoid damage from aggressive ants. Beetles learned to select the relevant coherent behavioral patterns from the set of seven patterns, which are common to all four species and apparently innate. We suggest that this form of learning differs from the known forms of associative learning, and speculate that it is quite universal and can be present in a wide variety of species, both invertebrate and vertebrate. This study suggests a new link between the concepts of cognition and innateness.

Red Wood Ants Display Natural Aversive Learning Differently Depending on Their Task Specialization

“…Since syrphid larvae may occasionally be part of the ant diet (Punttila et al, 2004), naïve foragers can recognize them as “a general image of a victim” such as many larvae of other insects permanently found in the ants’ prey (Iakovlev et al, 2017), rather than “an enemy image.” The hoverfy larva, with its relatively safe gluing secretion, is much less dangerous than, say, predatory ground beetles who can kill the ants, and also have chemical protection. It has been demonstrated earlier that red wood ants possess an innate template for perception and identification of an “enemy image” including such features of the predatory ground beetles as dark coloration, the size, the presence of “outgrowths” (legs, antennae), body symmetry, the rate of movement, and scent (Dorosheva et al, 2011; Reznikova and Dorosheva, 2013). However, the ability to single out the key features and complete the integral image seems to require accumulation of experience (Reznikova and Iakovlev, 2008), and hunters are much more cautious toward the ground beetles than both nest guards and naïve workers (Iakovlev, 2010).…”

Perilaku pemilihan pakan plastik dan respons biologi imago kumbang Tenebrio molitor L. (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

“…Setiap perlakuan diulang 10 kali. Pergerakan kumbang diamati dengan menghitung dan mencatat jumlah kumbang yang berkelompok di ruang destinasi sekat pada enam waktu terpilih 30, 75 detik, 3, 5, 10 menit, dan 24 jam setelah pelepasan dimodifikasi dari Valentine (1931), Suzuki (2011), Reznikova & Dorosheva (2013), dan Nurul & Noor (2019).…”