Insects Provide Unique Systems to Investigate How Early-Life Experience Alters the Brain and Behavior

Abstract

Early-life experiences have strong and long-lasting consequences for behavior in a surprising diversity of animals. Determining which environmental inputs cause behavioral change, how this information becomes neurobiologically encoded, and the functional consequences of these changes remain fundamental puzzles relevant to diverse fields from evolutionary biology to the health sciences. Here we explore how insects provide unique opportunities for comparative study of developmental behavioral plasticity. Insects have sophisticated behavior and cognitive abilities, and they are frequently studied in their natural environments, which provides an ecological and adaptive perspective that is often more limited in lab-based vertebrate models. A range of cues, from relatively simple cues like temperature to complex social information, influence insect behavior. This variety provides experimentally tractable opportunities to study diverse neural plasticity mechanisms. Insects also have a wide range of neurodevelopmental trajectories while sharing many developmental plasticity mechanisms with vertebrates. In addition, some insects retain only subsets of their juvenile neuronal population in adulthood, narrowing the targets for detailed study of cellular plasticity mechanisms. Insects and vertebrates share many of the same knowledge gaps pertaining to developmental behavioral plasticity. Combined with the extensive study of insect behavior under natural conditions and their experimental tractability, insect systems may be uniquely qualified to address some of the biggest unanswered questions in this field.

Agonistic experience during development establishes inter-individual differences in approach-avoidance behaviour of crickets

“…Insects provide unique systems to investigate the influence of early life experience in shaping behaviour 49 . Our study provides experimental evidence that consistent inter-individual differences in behaviour of adult male crickets can result alone from social experience gathered during nymphal development.…”

Olfactory Strategies in the Defensive Behaviour of Insects

“…The state and size of the colony also affect defensive responses [ 67 , 92 , 93 ]. Internal factors such as genetic traits, early social life [ 94 ] and age/task allocation also change the response to the alarm pheromone in bees [ 95 , 96 ]. Differential responses to the alarm pheromone depending on age have also been reported in the ant Platythyrea punctata [ 97 ].…”

Clever pest control? The role of cognition in biological pest regulation

“…There is evidence that aversive conditioning to semiochemicals can directly reduce infestation and increase preference for non-crop plants (Cunningham et al 1998 ). However, the effect of this varies across the diverse life history phases in insects, and it seems to be more effective when experienced in the early stages for newly emerging pests (Westwick and Rittschof 2021 ). Volatile cues have also been used to modify oviposition sites (Bruce et al 2005 ; Carlsson et al 1999 ).…”