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Insects Provide Unique Systems To Investigate How Early-Life Experience Alters The Brain And Behavior, Rebecca R. Westwick, Clare C. Rittschof
Insects Provide Unique Systems To Investigate How Early-Life Experience Alters The Brain And Behavior, Rebecca R. Westwick, Clare C. Rittschof
Entomology Faculty Publications
Early-life experiences have strong and long-lasting consequences for behavior in a surprising diversity of animals. Determining which environmental inputs cause behavioral change, how this information becomes neurobiologically encoded, and the functional consequences of these changes remain fundamental puzzles relevant to diverse fields from evolutionary biology to the health sciences. Here we explore how insects provide unique opportunities for comparative study of developmental behavioral plasticity. Insects have sophisticated behavior and cognitive abilities, and they are frequently studied in their natural environments, which provides an ecological and adaptive perspective that is often more limited in lab-based vertebrate models. A range of cues, …