Early life nutritional quality effects on adult memory retention in a parasitic wasp

Nutritional quality during early life can affect learning ability and memory retention of animals. Here we studied the effect of resource quality gained during larval development on the learning ability and memory retention of 2 sympatric strains of similar genetic background of the parasitoid Trichogramma brassicae: one uninfected and one infected by Wolbachia. Wolbachia is a common arthropod parasite/mutualistic symbiont with a range of known effects on host fitness. Here we studied, for the first time, the interaction between resource quality and Wolbachia infection on memory retention and resource acquisition. Memory retention of uninfected wasps was significantly longer when reared on high quality hosts when compared to low quality hosts. Furthermore, uninfected wasps emerging from high quality hosts showed higher values of protein and triglyceride than those emerging from low quality hosts. In contrast, the memory retention for infected wasps was the same irrespective of host qual...