Memory extinction and spontaneous recovery shaping parasitoid foraging behavior.

ABSTRACT: Animals can alter their foraging behavior through associative learning, where an encounter with an essential resource (e.g., food or a reproductive opportunity) is associated with nearby environmental cues (e.g., volatiles). This can subsequently improve the animal's foraging efficiency. However, when these associated cues are encountered again, the anticipated resource is not always present. Such an unrewarding experience, also called a memory-extinction experience, can change an animal's response to the associated cues. Although some studies are available on the mechanisms of this process, they rarely focus on cues and rewards that are relevant in an animal's natural habitat. In this study, we tested the effect of different types of ecologically relevant memory-extinction experiences on

SUBMITTER: de Bruijn JAC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8528537 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep-Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature