Data from: Imprinting can cause a maladaptive preference for infectious conspecifics

Recognizing and associating with specific individuals, such as conspecifics or kin, brings many benefits. One mechanism underlying such recognition is imprinting: the long-term memory of cues encountered during development. Typically, juveniles imprint on cues of nearby individuals and may later associate with phenotypes matching their ‘recognition template’. However, phenotype matching could lead to maladaptive social decisions if, for instance, individuals imprint on the cues of conspecifics infected with directly transmitted diseases. To investigate the role of imprinting in the sensory ecology of disease transmission, we exposed juvenile guppies, Poecilia reticulata, to the cues of healthy conspecifics, or to those experiencing disease caused by the directly transmitted parasite Gyrodactylus turnbulli. In a dichotomous choice test, adult ‘disease-imprinted’ guppies preferred to associate with the chemical cues of G. turnbulli-infected conspecifics, whereas ‘healthy-imprinted’ guppies preferred to associate with cues of uninfected conspecifics. These responses were only observed when stimulus fish were in late infection, suggesting imprinted fish responded to cues of disease, but not of infection alone. We discuss how maladaptive imprinting may promote disease transmission in natural populations of a social host.对特定个体（如同种个体（conspecifics）或亲属）进行识别并建立社交关联，可带来诸多益处。介导此类识别的核心机制之一为印刻（imprinting）：即个体在发育阶段对所接触的信号建立长期记忆的过程。通常情况下，幼体通过对邻近个体的信号形成印刻，后续可与匹配其‘识别模板（recognition template）’的表型个体建立社交关联。然而，若个体对携带直接传播性疾病的同种个体的信号形成印刻，表型匹配可能会引发适应不良的社交决策。 为探究印刻在疾病传播的感官生态学中的作用，我们将幼体孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）暴露于健康同种个体的信号，或暴露于感染了直接传播性寄生虫特氏三代虫（Gyrodactylus turnbulli）的患病个体的信号中。在二元选择实验（dichotomous choice test）中，经‘疾病印刻’的成年孔雀鱼更倾向于与感染Gyrodactylus turnbulli的同种个体的化学信号（chemical cues）建立关联，而经‘健康印刻’的成年孔雀鱼则更倾向于与未受感染的同种个体的信号建立关联。此类反应仅在受试鱼处于感染后期时才可被观测到，这表明经印刻的个体是对疾病相关信号产生响应，而非仅对感染本身作出反应。我们还将探讨适应不良的印刻效应，如何在社会性宿主的自然种群中促进疾病传播。