Abstract
The importance of early experience in animals’ life is unquestionable, and imprinting-like phenomena may shape important aspects of behaviour. Early learning typically occurs during a sensitive period, which restricts crucial processes of information storage to a specific developmental phase. The characteristics of the sensitive period have been largely investigated in vertebrates, because of their complexity and plasticity, both in behaviour and neurophysiology, but early learning occurs also in invertebrates. In social insects, early learning appears to influence important social behaviours such as nestmate recognition. Yet, the mechanisms underlying recognition systems are not fully understood. It is currently believed that Polistes social wasps are able to discriminate nestmates from non-nestmates following the perception of olfactory cues present on the paper of their nest, which are learned during a strict sensitive period, immediately after emergence. Here, through differential odour experience experiments, we show that workers of Polistes dominula develop correct nestmate recognition abilities soon after emergence even in absence of what have been so far considered the necessary cues (the chemicals spread on nest paper). P. dominula workers were exposed for the first four days of adult life to paper fragments from their nest, or from a foreign conspecific nest or to a neutral condition. Wasps were then transferred to their original nests where recognition abilities were tested. Our results show that wasps do not alter their recognition ability if exposed only to nest material, or in absence of nest material, during the early phase of adult life. It thus appears that the nest paper is not used as a source of recognition cues to be learned in a specific time window, although we discuss possible alternative explanations. Our study provides a novel perspective for the study of the ontogeny of nestmate recognition in Polistes wasps and in other social insects.
Highlights
Experiences in life can have significant consequences on the behaviour of animals and on their survival
Neither the presence of alien nest fragments nor the total absence of nest material altered the wasps’ recognition abilities. This is a completely novel result concerning the ontogeny of nestmate recognition in Polistes wasps
One possible explanation for our results is that P. dominula wasps may form the referent template at the adult stage from a direct contact with nestmates, as in some species of ants in which the template formation appears to be based on cues learned from other workers [40,41,42,43]
Summary
Experiences in life can have significant consequences on the behaviour of animals and on their survival. The most suitable learning period, in general, corresponds to an early phase of the individual’s life. In ducks and chickens auditory and visual stimuli that identify the parents are learned within a few days from hatching [3,4], being the parents the first individuals met in natural conditions. These stimuli are later used to recognize and follow the parents and to recognize and avoid other adults as well as heterospecifics that could be potential predators [5]
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