The results provide the first experimental evidence of spatial learning in any butterfly or moth species.
The findings also suggest Heliconius butterflies may be able to learn spatial information at large scales, consistent with the apparent importance of long-range spatial learning for traplining, which involves foraging within a home range of a few hundred square metres.
Spatial learning is known in insects, but much of the research has focused on ant and bee species which live socially in a communal nest. This study provides the first direct evidence of spatial learning in butterflies or moths, and suggests that complex learning skills, such as the use of spatial information, may be more common in insects than previously thought.
‘Rapid expansion and visual specialisation of learning and memory centers in the brains of Heliconiini butterflies’ by Antoine Couto, Stephen Montgomery et al. in Current Biology.