Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2013 Dec 2;23(23):2407–2412. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.10.016

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© 2013 The Authors

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

PMC Copyright notice

The Acquisition of Aversive, but Not Appetitive, Associative Odor Preferences in Desert Locusts Is Phase Dependent

(A) A single aversive associative trial with vanilla odor as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and blank artificial diet containing 10% nicotine hydrogen tartrate (NHT) as the unconditioned stimulus (US) caused a phase-dependent change in the odor preference. As compared with the naive preference (dashed line), solitarious locusts showed strong odor aversion toward the CS as soon as 10 min after training (10 min, 34%, G₁ = 23.61; 4 hr, 32%, G₁ = 26.7; 24 hr, 36%, G₁ = 20.73; all n = 44, p < 0.001), whereas in gregarious locusts, the aversive response was delayed (10 min, 59%, G₁ = 2.22, p = 0.136; 4 hr, 25%, G₁ = 37.26, p < 0.001; 24 hr, 33%, G₁ = 23.61, p < 0.001). Transiens locusts did not show an aversive odor preference at any of the tested times when compared with the naive preference (10 min, 30%, G₁ = 0.01; 4 hr, 34%, G₁ = 0.29; 24 hr, 34%, G₁ = 0.29; all n = 44, p > 0.589). When locusts of all three phases were trained with only the CS, their choices were indistinguishable from naive preference (solitarious: 10 min, 27%; 4 hr, 30%; 24 hr, 25%; gregarious: 10 min, 36%; 4 hr, 34%; 24 hr, 27%; transiens: 10 min, 34%; 4 hr, 27%; 24 hr, 30%; all n = 44, G₁ < 0.74, p > 0.390).

(B) Four appetitive associative trials with lemon odor as the CS and artificial diet as the US caused a significant increase in the preference for the CS, regardless of the locusts’ phase state, compared with that of naive locusts (solitarious: 10 min, 61%; 4 hr, 52%; 24 hr, 57%; gregarious: 10 min, 59%; 4 hr, 61%; 24 hr, 50%; transiens: 10 min, 61%; 4 hr, 71%; 24 hr, 64%; all n = 44, G₁ > 9.18, p < 0.006). The odor preference of locusts trained with CS only was no different than expected from the naive preference (solitarious: 10 min, 32% lemon over vanilla; 4 hr, 34%; 24 hr, 32%; gregarious: 10 min, 36%; 4 hr, 34%; 24 hr, 34%; transiens: 10 min, 30%; 4 hr, 27%; 24 hr, 25%; all n = 44, G₁ < 0.74, p > 0.39).

Error bars represent ±SE. ^∗∗p < 0.01; ^∗∗∗p < 0.001.