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Why do Manduca sexta feed from white flowers? Innate and learnt colour preferences in a hawkmoth

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Author

Summary, in English

Flower colour is an important signal used by flowering plants to attract pollinators. Many anthophilous insects have an innate colour preference that is displayed during their first foraging bouts and which could help them locate their first nectar reward. Nevertheless, learning capabilities allow insects to switch their colour preferences with experience and thus, to track variation in floral nectar availability. Manduca sexta, a crepuscular hawkmoth widely studied as a model system for sensory physiology and behaviour, visits mostly white, night-blooming flowers lacking UV reflectance throughout its range in the Americas. Nevertheless, the spectral sensitivity of the feeding behaviour of naive moths shows a narrow peak around 450 nm wavelengths, suggesting an innate preference for the colour blue. Under more natural conditions (i.e. broader wavelength reflectance) than in previous studies, we used dual choice experiments with blue- and white-coloured feeders to investigate the innate preference of naive moths and trained different groups to each colour to evaluate their learning capabilities. We confirmed the innate preference of M. sexta for blue and found that these moths were able to switch colour preferences after training experience. These results unequivocally demonstrate that M. sexta moths innately prefer blue when presented against white flower models and offer novel experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis that learning capabilities could be involved in their foraging preferences, including their widely observed attraction to white flowers in nature.

Publishing year

2008

Language

English

Pages

569-576

Publication/Series

Naturwissenschaften

Volume

95

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Zoology

Keywords

  • sensory ecology
  • Lepidoptera
  • innate preference
  • learning
  • vision

Status

Published

Research group

  • Lund Vision Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1432-1904