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.