School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Biol Lett. 2012 Dec 23;8(6):932-5. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0685. Epub 2012 Sep 19.
Learning is an important form of phenotypic plasticity that allows organisms to adjust their behaviour to the environment. An individual's learning performance can be affected by its mother's environment. For example, mothers exposed to stressors, such as restraint and forced swimming, often produce offspring with impaired learning performance. However, it is unclear whether there are maternal effects on offspring learning when mothers are exposed to ecologically relevant stressors, such as predation risk. Here, we examined whether maternal predator-exposure affects adult offsprings' learning of a discrimination task in threespined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Mothers were either repeatedly chased by a model predator (predator-exposed) or not (unexposed) while producing eggs. Performance of adult offspring from predator-exposed and unexposed mothers was assessed in a discrimination task that paired a particular coloured chamber with a food reward. Following training, all offspring learned the colour-association, but offspring of predator-exposed mothers located the food reward more slowly than offspring of unexposed mothers. This pattern was not driven by initial differences in exploratory behaviour. These results demonstrate that an ecologically relevant stressor (predation risk) can induce maternal effects on offspring learning, and perhaps behavioural plasticity more generally, that last into adulthood.
学习是一种重要的表型可塑性形式，使生物体能够根据环境调整自己的行为。个体的学习表现可能会受到其母亲环境的影响。例如，暴露于应激源（如束缚和强制游泳）的母亲通常会产生学习表现受损的后代。然而，当母亲暴露于捕食者风险等与生态相关的应激源时，是否会对后代的学习产生母体效应尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了母体外捕食者暴露是否会影响三刺鱼（Gasterosteus aculeatus）成鱼对辨别任务的学习。当产卵时，母亲要么被模型捕食者反复追逐（暴露于捕食者），要么不追逐（未暴露）。通过辨别任务评估来自暴露于捕食者和未暴露于捕食者的母亲的成鱼的表现，该任务将特定颜色的腔室与食物奖励配对。在训练后，所有后代都学会了颜色关联，但暴露于捕食者的母亲的后代比未暴露于捕食者的母亲的后代找到食物奖励的速度更慢。这种模式不是由初始探索行为的差异驱动的。这些结果表明，一种与生态相关的应激源（捕食风险）可以诱导母体对后代学习的影响，也许更普遍地影响行为可塑性，这种影响会持续到成年期。
