Learning the way to blood: first evidence of dual olfactory conditioning in a blood-sucking insect, Rhodnius prolixus. I. Appetitive learning

Abstract

SUMMARY It has been largely assumed that the individual experience of insects that are disease vectors might not only contribute to animal fitness, but also have an important influence on parasite transmission. Nevertheless, despite the invested efforts in testing the capacity to learn and remember information in blood-sucking insects, only little conclusive information has been obtained to date. Adapting a classical conditioning approach to our haematophagous model, we trained larvae of Rhodnius prolixus to associate l-lactic-acid, an odour perceived by these bugs but behaviourally neutral when presented alone, with food (i.e. positive reinforcement). Naive bugs – those exposed either to a conditioned stimulus (CS, l-lactic acid), unconditioned stimulus (US, heat) and reward (blood) alone or CS, US and reward in the absence of contingency – remained indifferent to the presence of an air stream loaded with l-lactic acid when tested in an olfactometer (random orientation), whereas the groups previously exposed to the contingency CS–US–reward (blood) were significantly attracted by l-lactic-acid. In a companion paper, the opposite, i.e. repellence, was induced in bugs exposed to the contingency of the same odour with a negative reinforcement. This constitutes the first evidence of olfactory conditioning in triatomine bugs, vectors of Chagas disease, and one of the few substantiations available to date of olfactory conditioning in haematophagous insects.