Social learning in noncolonial insects?
Social learning and use of social information in general have been understood to be largely restricted to vertebrates. Among insects, social learning or processes akin to it have been reported only in colonial species (bees, ants, termites), suggesting that highly structured social organizations may have assisted the evolution of social learning. However, learning about predators or predation risk from others may constitute life-saving information, and not just in vertebrates or colonial insects. Theory predicts that social acquisition of such information should therefore have been evolutionarily favored in any species where members of that species can observe each other and behave differently under conditions of predation risk.
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