Université de Fribourg

Learning ability and longevity: a symmetrical evolutionary trade-off in Drosophila

Burger, Joep M. S. ; Kolss, Munjong ; Pont, Juliette ; Kawecki, Tadeusz J.

In: Evolution, 2008, vol. 62, no. 6, p. 1294–1304

Learning ability can be substantially improved by artificial selection in animals ranging from Drosophila to rats. Thus these species have not used their evolutionary potential with respect to learning ability, despite intuitively expected and experimentally demonstrated adaptive advantages of learning. This suggests that learning is costly, but this notion has rarely been tested. Here we report...

Université de Fribourg

Genetically idiosyncratic responses of Drosophila melanogaster populations to selection for improved learning ability

Kawecki, Tadeusz J. ; Mery, Frederic

In: Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2006, vol. 19, no. 4, p. 1265-1274

To what extent is adaptive evolution over short timescales repeatable? To address this question, we studied the performance of crosses between replicate Drosophila melanogaster lines previously subject to selection for improved learning response in the context of oviposition substrate choice. Of the 10 pairwise F1 crosses among the five selection lines, four performed in the original learning...

Université de Fribourg

No trade-off between learning ability and parasitoid resistance in Drosophila melanogaster

Kolss, Munjong ; Kraaijeveld, A. R. ; Mery, Frederic ; Kawecki, Tadeusz J.

In: Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2006, vol. 19, no. 4, p. 1359-1363

Learning ability and immunity to parasites are linked at the physiological level in several insect species. The aim of this work was to investigate the relationship between learning and immunity at an evolutionary level. We tested whether selection for improved learning ability in Drosophila melanogaster led to changes in parasitoid resistance as a correlated response. Similarly, we assayed...

Université de Fribourg

Reduced learning ability as a consequence of evolutionary adaptation to nutritional stress in Drosophila melanogaster

Kolss, Munjong ; Kawecki, Tadeusz J.

In: Ecological Entomology, 2008///doi:10.1111/j.1365-2311.2008.01007.x

Abstract. 1. Dietary conditions affect cognitive abilities of many species, but it is unclear to what extent this physiological effect translates into an evolutionary relationship.2. A reduction of competitive ability under nutritional stress has been reported as a correlated response to selection for learning ability in Drosophila melanogaster. Here we test whether the reverse holds as well,...

Université de Fribourg

Effects of inbreeding on aversive learning in Drosophila

Nepoux, V. ; Haag, Christoph R. ; Kawecki, Tadeusz J.

In: Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2010, p. -

Inbreeding adversely affects life history traits as well as various other fitness-related traits, but its effect on cognitive traits remains largely unexplored, despite their importance to fitness of many animals under natural conditions. We studied the effects of inbreeding on aversive learning (avoidance of an odour previously associated with mechanical shock) in multiple inbred lines of...