#  Nature or nurture? Or possibly random? 

 





February 03, 2022

 

 

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 A new study in *[Biology Letters ](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0424#d1e946)*examined genetically similar fruit flies (*Drosophila melanogaster*) raised in an identical environment and found the flies still learned in different ways. The flies learned to avoid negative experiences at different rates despite being genetically similar and raised in the same environment, suggesting individuality may not be influenced by nature or nurture only, but possibly by a third factor: randomness.

 Previous studes showed that fruit flies that have been genetically modified or bred for identical genomes, and raised in identical environments showed individual preferences for light, temperature, postures, and turning left or right. The study's researchers questioned if the flies would perform similarly in a learned setting.

 Researchers used one-week-old female fruit flies that had nearly identical genomes, were housed together, and fed the same cornmeal diet. They tested the flies' abilities to learn tasks by placing each fly in a testing arena with two tunnels with different odors. On one day one odor was associated with either a bitter taste or an electric shock. The next day the other odor was associated with a negative stimulus.

 "The flies had widely varying responses to a single training session, reflecting clear individual differences," said senior author OEB Professor Benjamin de Bivort. "And those differences remained consistent for each individual. For example, the ones that quickly learned to avoid the shock were the same ones that quickly learned to avoid the bitter taste."

 Random factors or differences in experience could contribute to a species' ability to adapt to a changing world by ensuring a healthy variety of individual traits. "If the world is unpredictable in how reliable learning cues are, it may be a good strategy to produce some flies that are early adopters, which would be helpful when cues are reliable, alongside sceptics, which are helpful when cues are unreliable,” said de Bivort, “That way, no matter the state of the world, some of the progeny will have the right learning strategy."

 The researchers believe that small random developmental differences in learning circuits account for different learning styles. “The adult fly brain builds itself during the animal’s pupal phase. The ‘program’ that constructs it likely has a slightly different outcome every time, and we hypothesise that those differences matter for the behaviour,” said de Bivort.

#####  Image: Fruit flies by Aleksandar Kitanovic/Alamy



 

 

 



 

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