Choosing Hosts and Mates: The Value of Learning

Abstract

Recent discussions of animal learning emphasize the importance of considering an animal’s ecology when interpreting its learning abilities (Johnston, 1982; Bolles and Beecher, 1988; Staddon and Ettinger, 1989). The implementation of this approach has so far been directed primarily at a few well-studied species. As a result of some success in revealing correspondences between what an animal can learn and its lifestyle, it has been recommended that a species’ ecology be thoroughly understood before learning experiments are conducted (Kamil and Mauldin, 1988). However, the risk here is that our understanding of learning will be limited to case studies that cannot be easily extended to other species. A useful companion approach would be to find general conditions favoring learning that can then be used as a framework for studying learning in individual species. As an example, the value of learning about a resource depends upon its variability or patchiness; if the resource is constant, then a fixed or innate response is favored, while increasing variability favors assessment and learning (Green 1980; see Stephens, this volume). Ideas such as this, generated from the functionalist’s perspective without concern for particular mechanisms, may generate important organizing principles in the study of learning in animals.