Cognition in the field: comparison of reversal learning performance in captive and wild passerines

Cauchoix, Maxime; Hermer, E.; Chaine, Alexis S.; Morand‐Ferron, Julie

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13179-5

Cited by 75 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Experimental manipulations now possible with wild animals in their natural environment should also allow direct tests for such trade-offs. Small resident birds in particular provide a convenient model to test many of the questions discussed here and link individual variation in cognitive traits to variation in fitness (Croston et al 2017;Cauchoix 2017). Finally, some traits such as forgetting, might be difficult to measure, but, on the other hand, memory retention can be measured and memory load can also be manipulated experimentally both in the lab and in the field.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is also important to use reversal tasks that do not rely on binary and reusable choices (e.g. Cauchoix et al 2017) as such tasks mainly test animals' ability to learn the rules that the rewarding choices always alternate. To test for potential trade-offs between memory retention and flexibility, reversal or serial reversal tasks should involve learning non-repeatable associations during each reversal, which will allow testing both memory retention and memory flexibility as a function of increasing memory load.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spatial memory and cognitive flexibility trade-offs: to be or not to be flexible, that is the question

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cognitive flexibility allows animals to readily acquire new information even when learning contingencies may rapidly change, as is the case in highly variable, but predictable environments. While cognitive flexibility is broadly thought to be beneficial, animals exhibit inter-and intra-specific variation, with higher levels of flexibility associated with reduced memory retention and vice versa. In this review, we discuss when and why such variation may exist and focus specifically on memory and memory flexibility. We argue that retained memories may negatively affect the acquisition of new information, most likely via proactive interference, and available data suggest that there may be a trade-off between memory retention and acquiring new memories. We discuss neurogenesismediated forgetting as the mechanism reducing memory interference, as new neurons enhance learning new information, but also cause forgetting of older memories. Selection may be expected to favor either end of the continuum between memory retention and memory flexibility depending on life history and environment. More stable environments may favor memory retention over flexibility whereas rapidly changing environments may favor flexibility over retention. Higher memory capacity also seems to be associated with higher memory interference, so higher neurogenesis rates associated with forgetting of unnecessary information may be favored when higher capacity is beneficial such as in food-caching species. More research is necessary to understand if inter-and intra-specific differences in the association between memory retention and flexibility are related to some general ecological patterns, whether this association is heritable, and whether developmental conditions and experience have different effects on this association in different species.

show abstract

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial memory and cognitive flexibility trade-offs: to be or not to be flexible, that is the question

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Cognitive experiments conducted in the wild rely on protocols where animals freely interact with the experimental setup (Thornton and Samson 2012;Morand-Ferron et al 2016). This voluntary participation, coupled with automatic data collection devices, can reveal the behavioral performance of the target species (Morand-Ferron et al 2015;Cauchoix et al 2017).…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-ranging bats combine three different cognitive processes for roost localization

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals have evolved different cognitive processes to localize crucial resources that are difficult to find. Relevant cognitive processes such as associative learning and spatial memory have commonly been studied in a foraging related context under controlled laboratory conditions. However, in natural environments, animals can use multiple cognitive processes to localize resources. In this field study, we used a pairwise choice experiment and automatic roost monitoring to assess how individually marked, free-ranging Bechstein's bats belonging to two different colonies use associative learning, spatial memory and social information when localizing suitable day roosts. To our knowledge, this study tests for the first time how associative learning, spatial memory and social information are used in the process of roost localization in bats under the natural conditions. We show that, when searching for new roosts, bats used associative learning to discriminate between suitable and unsuitable roosts. For re-localizing previously occupied roosts, bats used spatial memory rather than associative learning. Moreover, bats significantly improved the localization of suitable unfamiliar roosts and tended to increase their accuracy to re-localize previously occupied day roosts using social information. Our field experiments suggest that Bechstein's bats make hierarchical use of different cognitive processes when localizing day roosts. More generally, our study underlines that evaluating different cues under natural conditions is fundamental to understanding how natural selection has shaped the cognitive processes used for localizing resources.

show abstract

“…Here, we used the value p < 0.05, because p < 0.05 is a common level used to assess the significance of a result. Note that during training we used the threshold "9 out of 10" which is commonly used to determine when an animal has learnt a task, based on cognitive literature (Cauchoix, Hermer, Chaine, & Morand-Ferron, 2017).…”

Section: Detection Dogmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing noninvasive methodologies to assess koala population health through detecting Chlamydia from scats

Cristescu

Miller

Schultz

et al. 2019

Molecular Ecology Resources

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wildlife diseases are a recognized driver of global biodiversity loss, have substantial economic impacts, and are increasingly becoming a threat to human health. Disease surveillance is critical but remains difficult in the wild due to the substantial costs and potential biases associated with most disease detection methods. Noninvasive scat surveys have been proposed as a health monitoring methodology to overcome some of these limitations. Here, we use the known threat of Chlamydia disease to the iconic, yet vulnerable, koala Phascolarctos cinereus to compare three methods for Chlamydia detection in scats: multiplex quantitative PCR, next generation sequencing, and a detection dog specifically trained on scats from Chlamydia‐infected koalas. All three methods demonstrated 100% specificity, while sensitivity was variable. Of particular interest is the variable sensitivity of these diagnostic tests to detect sick individuals (i.e., not only infection as confirmed by Chlamydia‐positive swabs, but with observable clinical signs of the disease); for koalas with urogenital tract disease signs, sensitivity was 78% with quantitative PCR, 50% with next generation genotyping and 100% with the detection dog method. This may be due to molecular methods having to rely on high‐quality DNA whereas the dog most likely detects volatile organic compounds. The most appropriate diagnostic test will vary with disease prevalence and the specific aims of disease surveillance. Acknowledging that detection dogs might not be easily accessible to all, the future development of affordable and portable “artificial noses” to detect diseases from scats in the field might enable cost‐effective, rapid and large‐scale disease surveillance.

show abstract

Cognition in the field: comparison of reversal learning performance in captive and wild passerines

Cited by 75 publications

References 65 publications

Spatial memory and cognitive flexibility trade-offs: to be or not to be flexible, that is the question

Spatial memory and cognitive flexibility trade-offs: to be or not to be flexible, that is the question

Free-ranging bats combine three different cognitive processes for roost localization

Developing noninvasive methodologies to assess koala population health through detecting Chlamydia from scats

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About