Rethinking recognition: social context in adult life rather than early experience shapes recognition in a social wasp.

ABSTRACT: Social recognition represents the foundation of social living. To what extent social recognition is hard-wired by early-life experience or flexible and influenced by social context of later life stages is a crucial question in animal behaviour studies. Social insects have represented classic models to investigate the subject, and the acknowledged idea is that relevant information to create the referent template for nest-mate recognition (NMR) is usually acquired during an early sensitive period in adult life. Experimental evidence, however, highlighted that other processes may also be at work in creating the template and that such a template may be updated during adult life according to social requirements. However, currently, we lack an ad hoc experiment testing the alternative hypotheses

SUBMITTER: Cappa F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7331005 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature