retention of memory through metamorphosis can a moth remember what it learned as a caterpillar保留的内存通过变形可以作为卡特彼勒蛾记得学.pdfVIP

Retention of Memory through Metamorphosis: Can a Moth Remember What It Learned As a Caterpillar? Douglas J. Blackiston, Elena Silva Casey, Martha R. Weiss* Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, D. C., United States of America Abstract Insects that undergo complete metamorphosis experience enormous changes in both morphology and lifestyle. The current study examines whether larval experience can persist through pupation into adulthood in Lepidoptera, and assesses two possible mechanisms that could underlie such behavior: exposure of emerging adults to chemicals from the larval environment, or associative learning transferred to adulthood via maintenance of intact synaptic connections. Fifth instar Manduca sexta caterpillars received an electrical shock associatively paired with a specific odor in order to create a conditioned odor aversion, and were assayed for learning in a Y choice apparatus as larvae and again as adult moths. We show that larvae learned to avoid the training odor, and that this aversion was still present in the adults. The adult aversion ¨ did not result from carryover of chemicals from the larval environment, as neither applying odorants to naıve pupae nor washing the pupae of trained caterpillars resulted in a change in behavior. In addition, we report that larvae trained at third instar still showed odor aversion after two molts, as fifth instars, but did not avoid the odor as adults, consistent with the idea that post-metamorphic recall involves regions of the brain that are not produced until later in larval development. The present study, the first to demonstrate conclusively that associative memory survives metamorphosis in Lepidopt