What a hawkmoth remembers after hibernation depends on innate preferences and conditioning situation

Summary, in English

Nectar-feeding insects find flowers by 2 means, innate preferences and learned associations. When insects that hibernate as imagos (i.e., adults) start foraging after a long winter break, what guides them to new nectar rewards? Are innate preferences kept over such a long period? And are learned associations useful after long breaks? In a series of experiments I show here that, depending on previous experience, the European hummingbird hawkmoth, Macroglossum stellatarum can use both types of information to choose a first flower after periods of 1 or 3 weeks. What is remembered seems to depend on innate preferences of the moths. Moths trained to feed from 1 of 2 colors that are equally attractive to naive moths keep the learned preference. Animals trained to prefer a less attractive color to an innately preferred color loose the learned preference and return to the innate choice behavior. I conclude that hummingbird hawkmoths can keep innate and learned preferences over a long period and are able to use both types of information when searching nectar rewards after long periods of hibernation.

• Author: Almut Kelber
• Department/s: Functional zoology; Lund Vision Group
• Publishing year: 2010
• Language: English
• Pages: 1093-1097
• Publication/Series: Behavioral Ecology
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 5
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arq115
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Topic: Zoology
• Keywords: stellatarum; Macroglossum; long-term memory; Lepidoptera; hummingbird hawkmoth; hibernation; hawkmoth; insects; color learning; innate preferences
• Status: Published
• Research group: Lund Vision Group
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1045-2249