PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pompilio, Lorena
AU  - Kacelnik, Alex
AU  - Behmer, Spencer T.
TI  - State-Dependent Learned Valuation Drives Choice in an Invertebrate
AID  - 10.1126/science.1123924
DP  - 2006 Mar 17
TA  - Science
PG  - 1613--1615
VI  - 311
IP  - 5767
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/311/5767/1613.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/311/5767/1613.full
SO  - Science2006 Mar 17; 311
AB  - Humans and other vertebrates occasionally show a preference for items remembered to be costly or experienced when the subject was in a poor condition (this is known as a sunk-costs fallacy or state-dependent valuation). Whether these mechanisms shared across vertebrates are the result of convergence toward an adaptive solution or evolutionary relicts reflecting common ancestral traits is unknown. Here we show that state-dependent valuation also occurs in an invertebrate, the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria (Orthoptera: Acrididae). Given the latter's phylogenetic and neurobiological distance from those groups in which the phenomenon was already known, we suggest that state-dependent valuation mechanisms are probably ecologically rational solutions to widespread problems of choice.