Learning by Honeybees in an Unnatural Situation

Abstract

Ethologists have been interested for the most part in genetically based, species-typical behavior rather than in the effects of individual experience, and so was Kenneth Roeder, although he was deeply concerned with the variability of that behavior and the sources of variability. In one of his late papers (Roeder 1975), he discussed what he termed “evitability” in the evasive response of noctuid moths to the ultrasonic cries of hunting insectivorous bats, taking notice of the so-called Harvard law of animal behavior which states that, when experimental conditions are properly controlled, the animal will do just as it pleases. The paper nicely illustrates Roeder’s way of working: he would raise an interesting question on the basis of careful and critical observation of unconstrained behavior, formulate hypotheses about ecological and evolutionary determinants, and look for underlying neural mechanisms. The source of evitability in the evasive behavior of moths, Roeder suggested, might be found in some property such as trans-synaptic instability “downstream in the moth central nervous system.”