Biological Preparedness

Dunlap, Aimee S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1301-1

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…For example, (i) ancestral organisms that could learn some cue combinations but not others would eventually give rise to descendants that could learn any cue combination; (ii) ancestral organisms that required multiple exposures to learn the cue-response association gave rise to descendants that required fewer exposures and, ultimately, final organisms that required only a single exposure; and (iii) in environments without cue reversals, ancestral organisms that could re-form associations multiple times gave rise to final organisms that could imprint only once. These adaptations are consistent with the literature on preparedness and other so-called constraints on learning (Seligman 1970;Shettleworth 2010;Domjan 2012;Dunlap 2017) as well as the literature on sensitive periods of plasticity (Bateson 1979;Cashdan 1994;Fawcett and Frankenhuis 2015). The key themes are that evolution produces learning mechanisms that are optimized for the needs of an animal in the environment where it evolved, and since learning is costly, evolution will often restrict the periods of an animal's life when it is most capable of learning (sensitive periods).…”

Section: How Evolution Continues To Shape Associative Learningsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…In addition, all environments provided organisms with the features thought necessary for learning to evolve: frequent choices of actions (move straight, turn right, or turn left) and cues that change each generation but reliably indicate the best choice within a generation (Dunlap andStephens 2009, 2016;Dunlap et al 2019). However, while these features were present in all environments, they proved insufficient to evolve learning.…”

Section: %-14% (Experiments 1 and 2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study complements and extends this work by examining how learning may have first arisen. As Dunlap demonstrated (Dunlap andStephens 2009, 2016;Dunlap et al 2019), learning is favored in environments that present alternative courses of action, where the best action cannot be predicted at the beginning of an organism's life but environmental cues exist that reliably correlate with the best action. However, we found that although all of the environments possessed those presumably necessary qualities, they were not sufficient for learning to arise, as evidenced by results from the random start environment.…”

Section: Emergence Of Learning Depends On the Prior Evolution Of Reflmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Evolutionary Origin of Associative Learning

Pontes

Mobley

Ofria

et al. 2020

The American Naturalist

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Learning is a widespread ability among animals and, like physical traits, is subject to evolution. But how did learning first arise? What selection pressures and phenotypic preconditions fostered its evolution? Neither the fossil record nor phylogenetic comparative studies provide answers to these questions. Here, we take a novel approach by studying digital organisms in environments that promote the evolution of navigation and associative learning. Starting with a nonlearning sessile ancestor, we evolve multiple populations in four different environments, each consisting of nutrient trails with various layouts. Trail nutrients cue organisms on which direction to follow, provided they evolve to acquire and use those cues. Thus, each organism is tested on how well it navigates a randomly selected trail before reproducing. We find that behavior evolves modularly and in a predictable sequence, where simpler behaviors are necessary precursors for more complex ones. Associative learning is only one of many successful behaviors to evolve, and its origin depends on the environment possessing certain information patterns that organisms can exploit. Environmental patterns that are stable across generations foster the evolution of reflexive behavior, while environmental patterns that vary across generations but remain consistent for periods within an organism's lifetime foster the evolution of learning behavior. Both types of environmental patterns are necessary, since the prior evolution of simple reflexive behaviors provides the building blocks for learning to arise. Finally, we observe that an intrinsic value system evolves alongside behavior and supports associative learning by providing reinforcement for behavior conditioning.

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