A PARADIGM FOR OPERANT CONDITIONING IN BLOW FLIES (PHORMIA TERRAE NOVAE ROBINEAU-DESVOIDY, 1830)

An operant conditioning situation for the blow fly (Protophormia terrae novae) is described. Individual flies are trained to enter and reenter a hole as the operant response. Only a few sessions of contingent reinforcement are required to increase response rates. When the response is no longer followed by food, the rate of entering the hole decreases. Control procedures revealed that rate of responding is not a simple overall result of feeding or of aging. The flies entered into the hole only if the response was required to obtain the food. Key words: associative learning, operant conditioning, blow flies, apparatus _______________________________________________________________________________ The majority of studies on learning in dipterans have been done in the context of classical conditioning of proboscis extension where one or more pairings of a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) subsequently leads to an extension of the proboscis to the CS in anticipation of the US (Chabaud, Devaud, Pham-Delègue, Preat &amp