You might be interested in the concept of the Devonian Toolkit raised a few years ago. It is mostly concerned with sensorimotor control in flight and suggests that because insect brains have remained relatively similar since the Devonian, and most flight control behaviours found in Drosophila are also found in other flying insects (and there are often similar behaviours for walking control), flying insects are likely to share a similar set of basic behavioural modules for flight control (the Devonian toolkit). This is hard to test but seems reasonable. I’d suggest that it is also possible that phylogenetically distant insects with a common ancestor may share similar capacities in the indicators this study uses for consciousness (like learning and memory traits). Thus, although insecta is a large taxa positive findings for some indicators could be quite generalizable.
I also have a comment about positive publication bias, particularly in behavioral experiments. Although such a bias certainly exists, and lack of evidence against a trait is not the same as evidence against a trait, evidence against a trait also has quite a high likelihood of being a false negative in a behavioral experiment. The reason for this is that even if an invertebrate is capable of displaying some behavioral trait, it can be quite hard design the correct experimental paradigm to encourage them to display it. In general I’d be put more faith in negative results reported for reflexive behaviours; anything involving a training task can become really difficult if the animal isn’t motivated to participate. For example, I’ve had colleagues working with polychaetes and toads (ok, not an invertebrate) who both struggled just to get these animals to respond reflexively to big obvious visual stimuli, let alone train them to do perform a discrimination task.
Nice post Daniela.
You might be interested in the concept of the Devonian Toolkit raised a few years ago. It is mostly concerned with sensorimotor control in flight and suggests that because insect brains have remained relatively similar since the Devonian, and most flight control behaviours found in Drosophila are also found in other flying insects (and there are often similar behaviours for walking control), flying insects are likely to share a similar set of basic behavioural modules for flight control (the Devonian toolkit). This is hard to test but seems reasonable. I’d suggest that it is also possible that phylogenetically distant insects with a common ancestor may share similar capacities in the indicators this study uses for consciousness (like learning and memory traits). Thus, although insecta is a large taxa positive findings for some indicators could be quite generalizable.
I also have a comment about positive publication bias, particularly in behavioral experiments. Although such a bias certainly exists, and lack of evidence against a trait is not the same as evidence against a trait, evidence against a trait also has quite a high likelihood of being a false negative in a behavioral experiment. The reason for this is that even if an invertebrate is capable of displaying some behavioral trait, it can be quite hard design the correct experimental paradigm to encourage them to display it. In general I’d be put more faith in negative results reported for reflexive behaviours; anything involving a training task can become really difficult if the animal isn’t motivated to participate. For example, I’ve had colleagues working with polychaetes and toads (ok, not an invertebrate) who both struggled just to get these animals to respond reflexively to big obvious visual stimuli, let alone train them to do perform a discrimination task.
Thanks again for your valuable comments and suggestions, Gavin! I’ll definitely dig deeper into those aspects you point out.