A reaction norm framework for the evolution of learning: how cumulative experience shapes phenotypic plasticity.

ABSTRACT: Learning is a familiar process to most people, but it currently lacks a fully developed theoretical position within evolutionary biology. Learning (memory and forgetting) involves adjustments in behaviour in response to cumulative sequences of prior experiences or exposures to environmental cues. We therefore suggest that all forms of learning (and some similar biological phenomena in development, aging, acquired immunity and acclimation) can usefully be viewed as special cases of phenotypic plasticity, and formally modelled by expanding the concept of reaction norms to include additional environmental dimensions quantifying sequences of cumulative experience (learning) and the time delays between events (forgetting). Memory therefore represents just one of a number of different internal n

SUBMITTER: Wright J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9543233 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature