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Insect Social Learning
Chapter

Insect Social Learning

Abstract

Some insect species rely on social learning to guide their behavior. The types of information learned from others can be rather minimal, as in the case of odor cues remaining from the larval period, which can help newly eclosed adult insects choose their own egg-laying substrate, or sophisticated as in the honeybee waggle dance, which involves symbolic coding about the location of and direction to profitable flowers. Some features of insect life history, including lack of parental care and nonoverlapping generations, could limit the prevalence of social learning in nonsocial insects.

Authors

Dukas R

Book title

Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior

Pagination

pp. 176-179

Publisher

Elsevier

Publication Date

January 1, 2009

DOI

10.1016/b978-0-08-045337-8.00058-9

Labels

Fields of Research (FoR)

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