The regulation of behavior in water-mites and some other arthropods.

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Abstract
(A) When placed in a Y-tube, several species of Hydrachnida and of Ento-mostracous Crustacea showed no ability to learn to choose a correct turn leading to relief from unfavorable conditions (confinement, shallowness of water), although a higher crustacean learned it. This difference in educability parallels a difference in natural mode of feeding the former species obtains prey only by chance collisions, the latter by exploration. (B) Hydrachnids were placed in a straight glass tube filled with water heated at one end to produce temp. gradients from 17.5 to 43[degree]C. (optimal temp. about 22[degree]). They avoided the hot end, due not to greater activity in general in the region of unfavorable temp. but to greater variability, not to greater distance traveled but more frequent reversals of direction, both toward and away from the hot end. (C) To make this clearer, Hydrachnids were placed in tubes kept at different constant temp. The variability of behavior increased directly with increases of abnormality of temp. The data are offered as supporting Jennings'' trial-and-error rather than Loeb''s tropic interpretation of the direction of animal behavior.

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