Digest: Early exposure to facial cues facilitates facial learning in paper wasps *

Tibbetts et al. evaluated the influence of the rearing environment on the facial learning capacity of the paper wasp Polistes metricus . Wasps reared with cues signaling individual identity learned to discriminate faces more accurately than wasps reared in the absence of facial cues. These findings indicate that developmental plasticity plays a significant role in the evolution of animal communication systems.