Is glucose aversion a learned response, or is it inherited?
Glucose is generally phagostimulatory (stimulates eating) for animals. The observation that cockroach populations exposed to poison + glucose bait began to refuse to eat glucose brings up the question of whether this aversion behavior is learned or whether it originated as a genetic mutation that became more common in the population over generations.
To answer this question, you can make use of some simple genetic crosses to look for predicted inheritance patterns. Only genetic traits, rather than learned behaviors, would be expected to show the predicted patterns. First, you need to find two populations of pure-breeding cockroaches:
one population that has been exposed to poison + glucose bait and exhibits the glucose-aversion behavior
one population that has not been exposed to poison + glucose bait and does not refuse to eat glucose (wild-type)
Next you perform a hybrid cross in which you mate together members from each of the two populations to create F1 offspring.
Drag the labels to complete each prediction so that it supports its hypothesis. Labels may be used once, more than once, or not at all.
Labels are: refuse glucose, have a mix of aversion and non-aversion, have an intermediate amount of aversion, eat glucose.
1. Glucose aversion is a genetically-determined recessive trait. If true, then the F1 offspring will...
2. Glucose aversion is a genetically-determined dominant trait. If true, then the F1 offspring will...
3. Glucose aversion is a genetically-determined incompletely dominant trait. If true, then the F1 offspring will...
4. Glucose aversion is a learned behavior. If true, then the F1 offspring will...
If glucose aversion is a learned behavior, then the offspring won't eat glucose because its a wild learned behavior. I don't think they are naturally attracted to the glucose bait. I think that the F1 offspring will refuse glucose.
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