Fernandes A Sofia D, Buckley Christopher L, Niven Jeremy E
Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ, UK
School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK.
J Exp Biol. 2018 Feb 7;221(Pt 3):jeb173260. doi: 10.1242/jeb.173260.
Wood ants are a model system for studying visual learning and navigation. They can forage for food and navigate to their nests effectively by forming memories of visual features in their surrounding environment. Previous studies of freely behaving ants have revealed many of the behavioural strategies and environmental features necessary for successful navigation. However, little is known about the exact visual properties of the environment that animals learn or the neural mechanisms that allow them to achieve this. As a first step towards addressing this, we developed a classical conditioning paradigm for visual learning in harnessed wood ants that allows us to control precisely the learned visual cues. In this paradigm, ants are fixed and presented with a visual cue paired with an appetitive sugar reward. Using this paradigm, we found that visual cues learnt by wood ants through Pavlovian conditioning are retained for at least 1 h. Furthermore, we found that memory retention is dependent upon the ants' performance during training. Our study provides the first evidence that wood ants can form visual associative memories when restrained. This classical conditioning paradigm has the potential to permit detailed analysis of the dynamics of memory formation and retention, and the neural basis of learning in wood ants.
木蚁是研究视觉学习和导航的一个模型系统。它们能够通过形成对周围环境视觉特征的记忆来有效地觅食并导航回巢穴。先前对自由活动蚂蚁的研究揭示了成功导航所需的许多行为策略和环境特征。然而，对于动物学习的环境的确切视觉属性以及使它们能够实现这一点的神经机制，我们却知之甚少。作为解决这个问题的第一步，我们为被束缚的木蚁开发了一种用于视觉学习的经典条件反射范式，这使我们能够精确控制所学的视觉线索。在这个范式中，蚂蚁被固定住，并呈现一个与美味糖奖励配对的视觉线索。使用这个范式，我们发现木蚁通过巴甫洛夫条件反射学到的视觉线索至少能保留1小时。此外，我们发现记忆保留取决于蚂蚁在训练期间的表现。我们的研究提供了首个证据，表明木蚁在被束缚时能够形成视觉联想记忆。这种经典条件反射范式有可能允许对木蚁记忆形成和保留的动态过程以及学习的神经基础进行详细分析。
