Nick Amador The scientific article, "Retention of Memory through Metamorphosis: Can a Moth Remember What It Learned As a Caterpillar?" attempts to answer five research questions. I will be covering the following three: "Do larvae learn aversive cues?" "Does aversive behavior persist across larval molts?" and "Does aversive behavior persist through metamorphosis?" No hypotheses were provided, but the experiments were successful in reaching conclusive results. The larval moths (caterpillars) were taught to avoid the odor of the chemical Ethyl Acetate (EA). The methodology for this process was as follows: M. Sexta larvae, which express neither attraction nor aversion toward EA, received a mild electrical shock immediately after they were exposed to the chemical. This produced an aversion toward the EA, as 78% of caterpillars that received the shock showed a preference to ambient air over the EA. The difference between control …show more content…
M. Sexta larvae have five phases of their life, called instars, before they start the process of pupation. 81% of the larvae who were taught to avoid EA during their third instars still showed an aversion to the chemical late in their fifth instars, just before pupation (with a p-value of less than 0.001, showing the difference between the fifth instar caterpillars who received the shock during their third instars and the control caterpillars, in terms of aversion to EA, to be significant.) This data was similar enough to the larvae that were both taught to avoid EA and tested for EA aversion in their fifth instars, that it was safe to assume that the differences in the data were caused by random chance (based on a p-value of 0.74) Therefore, aversive cues and behavior persist across larval molts, and the time between third and fifth instars doesn't show a significant difference in levels of response to
However, evidence such as fossils is more than enough to lend support and disprove any other theory to the development of species. Examples used by Root-Bernstein and McEachron also provide strong support to evolution. The authors detail how natural selection works in both insects and germs to create organisms better adapted to methods of control. Disease used to run rampant, until the creation of vaccines which led to many diseases becoming extinct. Root-Bernstein and McEachron note that the diseases that have survived to this day have been constantly mutating and evolving to become more resistant to any attempts at suppression. The same can be said for insects that have been consistently exposed to pesticides. The ones that survived the pesticides were able to reproduce and pass along a resistance to their offspring which in turn makes the species more resilient and better suited to their
Stevenson PA, Hofmann HA, Schoch K, Schildberger K. 2000. The fight and flight responses of crickets depleted of biogenic amines. Journal of Neurobiology 43:107-120.
Cephalopods are known to be exceptionally intelligent by invertebrate standards and in some respects even rival “higher” vertebrates. These animals have many highly evolved sensory and processing organs that allow them to gain a greater understanding of their environment and their place within it. Due to their advanced structures, many of which are analogous to vertebrate structures, and abilities they have been widely studied. Their methods of learning have been of prime interest and many experiments have been conducted to determine the different ways in which octopuses can learn. From these experiments four main kinds of learning have been identified in octopuses: associative learning, special learning,
The purpose of this lab was to study the response of the genus Daphnia to chemical stimuli and to examine human responses to different stimuli. A stimulus is an incentive; it is the cause of a physical response. Stimuli can have a physical or chemical change; an example of a physical change is a change in temperature and sound. An example of chemical change would be changes in hormone levels and pH levels. Muscular activity or glandular secretions are responses that occurs when stimulus information effects the nervous and/or hormone system. Daphnia is a genus; it is a small crustacean that lives in fresh water. The body of the daphnia is visible and its internal organs are clearly seen thus it was chosen for this exercise. The
Johan, J. B. G. .. d. V. a. J. P. K., 1990. Filial Imprinting and Associatid Learning. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 428, pp. 313-329.
Nonassociative learning refers to a change in the magnitude of a response following the repeated exposure to a particular stimulus. More often than not, nonassociative learning is divided into three forms: habituation, dishabituation, and sensitization and explained through a dual process view in which one process yields habituation to a stimulus, and yet another, separate, process causes both dishabituation and sensitization. Emilie A. Marcus, Thomas G. Nolen, Catharine H. Rankin, and Thomas J. Carew (1988) challenged this perspective by suggesting that dishabituation and sensitization, as well as inhibition, can stand independent and be dissociated in adult and juvenile Aplysia.
Fear conditioning is a commonly used behavioral paradigm to test an organism’s ability to create associations and learn to avoid aversive stimuli. There are two methodologies: cue and contextual fear conditioning (Kim & Jung, 2006). In cued fear conditioning, a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) which activates a strong unconditioned fear responses (UR). After a continued training period, the neutral CS is now able to activate a conditioned response (CR). Similarly, context conditioning occurs when the background or context cues, during the condition training, is able to predict the US and activate the fear response. For example, a mice can be placed in a novel environment and given an aversive stimulus (e.g. footshock). When the mice is returned to that same environment, it will display a CR (e.g. freezing). The mice’s ability for contextual fear conditioning is dependent on whether it was able to learn and associate its environment with the aversive stimulus. (Curzon, Rustay, and Browman, 2009)
Pesticides that behave like the female hormone estrogens can have serious effects on reproductive success and function on animal exposed to them. Reproductive success or fitness is defined by having live reproductively capable off...
Classical conditioning emphasises the importance of learning from the environment and supports nurture over nature. However, limiting the source of learning to only environment is a reductionist explanation of behaviour. When complex behavi...
Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. S. (2010). Adaptive memory: Ancestral priorities and the mnemonic values of survival processing. Cognitive Psychology, 61(1), 1-22.
These studies show that memory transience directly corresponds to an organism’s fitness and ability to process, analyze and solve new problems it is confronted with; and that it is responsible for increasing an organism’s behavioral flexibility and allows for an organism to make educated predictions based not only on past events but also on present information. Transience gives valuable insight into the mechanism of memory in the brain, proving that memory is not as static as some might assume nor is it as simple as the model of memory used in computers; rather it is a dynamic pool of information that is constantly updating and modifying itself to better understand the world around it. It allows the brain to grow and learn unimpeded acting as a silent regulator by removing detrimental information and replacing it with useful information; and while it is incredibly important to understand what transience is, the mechanisms behind it and what its purpose is, it is only one of many mechanisms involved in memory and even by fully understanding transience we have barely scratched the surface of what is truly going on in the
Behaviorists believe that development is not tied to biologically determined stages. Development results from organization of existing behaviors. There are two categories of learning: classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning focuses on associations linked to involuntary behaviors. Pavlov is the father of modern learning theory. Through his experiment he discovered that an unconditioned stimulus could automatically trigger an involuntary response. For example, a dog was placed in a dark room and a light was turned on. After 30 seconds some food was placed in the dog’s mouth, stimulating the salivation reflex. This procedure was repeated several times- each time the presentation of food was paired with the light. After a while the light, which initially has no relationship to salivation, produced the response itself. The dog has been conditioned to respond to the light. In Pavlov’s terms, the presentation of food was the unconditioned stimulus. The light was a conditioned stimulus; its effect required conditioning. Salivation to the food was called the unconditioned reflex, salivation to the light a conditioned reflex.
S. vulgaris are known as opportunistic feeders -- they eat whatever is available, but favor fruit crops. In 1992, starlings were one of the major bird species to damage a minimum of $4.4 million worth of grapes in the United States.(Linz, Homan, Gaulker, Penry, & Bleier, 2007) In order to reduce crop consumption, the United States Department of Agriculture has been conducting studies to test the efficacy of various deterrents placed on crops and pellets. These deterrents took advantage of the starlings’ lack of sucrase, an enzyme that is needed to break down sucrose. Adding anthraquinone-based repellents to sweet corn and blueberry among other foods was indicated to have been increasingly effective at repellency as the dosages increased.(Tupper, et al., 2014) European Starlings are voracious consumers of all crops, but additives may provide a method to reduce loss of developing
Frequency of application is defined as how often an insecticide is used that influence resistance development. Resistance can happen in many ways such as met...
Behaviorism is the point of view where learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships. Behaviorists agree that an individual’s behaviors is a result of their interaction with the environment. Feedback, praise and rewards are all ways people can respond to becoming conditioned. The focus is on observable events instead of events that happen in one’s head. The belief that learning has not happened unless there is an observable change in behavior. “The earliest and most Ardent of behaviourists was Watson (1931; Medcof and Roth, 1991; Hill 1997). His fundamental conclusion from many experimental observations of animal and childhood learning was that stimulus-response (S-R) connections are more likely to be established the more frequently or recently an S-R bond occurs. A child solving a number problem might have to make many unsuccessful trials before arriving at the correct solution” (Childs, 2004).