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Merging Mechanism and Adaptation: An Ethological Approach to Learning and Generalization

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Insect Learning

Abstract

Learning allows animals to infer correlations among stimuli in their environment in order to predict the future occurrence of resources or threats. Stimuli to which animals do not normally respond might be correlated over time with biologically important stimuli such as those related to food availability, mates, or predators. Once the correlation between stimuli is learned, detection of previously “neutral” stimuli might permit the animal to prepare for the biologically important event in optimal ways (Hollis, 1984, 1990). The robustness of such correlations can, however, change considerably both within and between generations. The ability to track this rapidly changing correlation with little or no concomitant genetic change is a way of coping with situations that change on a time scale shorter than that needed for genetic change. Models such as those proposed by Stephens (this volume) show how the time scale on which the environmental correlations change can affect the evolution of learning.

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Authors
  1. Brian H. Smith
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Insect Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Daniel R. Papaj

  2. Department of Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA

    Alcinda C. Lewis

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Smith, B.H. (1993). Merging Mechanism and Adaptation: An Ethological Approach to Learning and Generalization. In: Papaj, D.R., Lewis, A.C. (eds) Insect Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2814-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2814-2_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-6216-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-2814-2

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