Inhibitory control, exploration behaviour and manipulated ecological context are associated with foraging flexibility in the great tit.
TL;DR: In this article, the FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (EDC) grant was used to support the work of the authors in the field of bioinformatics and computer vision.
Abstract: Funder: FP7 Ideas: European Research Council; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100011199; Grant(s): FP7/2007‐2013
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TL;DR: In this paper , the temporal consistency and inter-relatedness of two behaviours influenced by inhibitory control (impulsive action and persistence) and how these link to social rank, foraging efficiency, and risk taking in adult female red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) were explored.
Abstract: Individual variation in cognition, seen in many taxa, is not well understood, despite its potential evolutionary consequences. Inhibitory control is an aspect of cognition which differs between individuals. However, how selection could act on this variation remains unclear. First, individual consistency over time of behaviours affected by inhibitory control, and how these behaviours relate to each other, is not well understood. Second, consequences in ecologically relevant contexts of variation in behaviours affected by inhibitory control, are scarcely investigated. Therefore, we explored the temporal consistency and inter-relatedness of two behaviours influenced by inhibitory control (impulsive action and persistence) and how these link to social rank, foraging efficiency, and risk taking in adult female red junglefowl (Gallus gallus). We measured impulsive action in a detour test, and persistence in both a detour test and a foraging test. Impulsive action and persistence, measured in a detour test, were moderately consistent over time, and positively correlated. This implies that selection could act on inhibitory control via these behaviours, and selection on one behaviour could affect the other. However, we found no evidence of links between inhibitory control and social rank, foraging efficiency, or risk taking. This implies that selection may not act on inhibitory control via these measures, and that, in general, there may be a lack of strong selection on inhibitory control. This, in turn, could help explain individual variation in this aspect of cognition. Future research should explore the specificity of when inhibitory control has implications for individuals, and continue to investigate how variation in cognitive traits influences how individuals behave in contexts with potential evolutionary implications.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors designed a variant of the detour task for wild great tits, Parus major, and deployed it at the nesting site across two spring seasons, and compared task performance of the same individuals in the wild across 2 years, and with their performance in captivity when tested using the classical cylinder detour tasks during the nonbreeding season.
2 citations
TL;DR: Animal species are increasingly experiencing more frequent and extreme weather in comparison with conditions in which the species evolved, and animals with reactive personalities are likely to be better able to cope with environmental changes due to climate change than animals with proactive personalities.
Abstract: The Sixth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes negative effects of climate change on animals occurring on a larger scale than previously appreciated. Animal species are increasingly experiencing more frequent and extreme weather in comparison with conditions in which the species evolved. Individual variation in behavioural and physiological responses of animals to stimuli from the environment is ubiquitous across all species. Populations with relatively high levels of individual variation are more likely to be able to survive in a range of environmental conditions and cope with climate change than populations with low levels of variation. Behavioural and physiological responses are linked in animals, and personality can be defined as consistent individual behavioural and physiological responses of animals to changes in their immediate environment. Glucocorticoids (cortisol and corticosterone) are hormones that, in addition to metabolic roles, are released when the neuroendocrine stress system is activated in response to stimuli from the environment perceived to be threatening. The size of a glucocorticoid response of an animal is an indication of the animal’s personality. Animals with reactive personalities have relatively high glucocorticoid responses, are relatively slow and thorough to explore new situations, and are more flexible and able to cope with changing or unpredictable conditions than animals with proactive personalities. Animals with reactive personalities are likely to be better able to cope with environmental changes due to climate change than animals with proactive personalities. A reaction norm shows the relationship between phenotype and environmental conditions, with the slope of a reaction norm for an individual animal a measure of phenotypic plasticity. If reaction norm slopes are not parallel, there is individual variation in plasticity. Populations with relatively high individual variation in plasticity of reaction norms will have more animals that can adjust to a new situation than populations with little variation in plasticity, so are more likely to persist as environments change due to climate change. Future studies of individual variation in plasticity of responses to changing environments will help understanding of how populations of animals may be able to cope with climate change.
1 citations
TL;DR: In this article , the authors examined the relationship between three putative personality traits, aggression, latency to emerge from a shelter and time to contact a novel object, and learning speed in both initial and reversal olfactory learning in the house cricket, Acheta domesticus .
1 citations
TL;DR: In this article , a population of breeding blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus, was confronted with different levels of predation threat at their nests and recorded their latency to resume brood provisioning after the removal of the predator stimulus.
1 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, a model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including both fixed-and random-effects terms, and the formula and data together determine a numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the profeatured REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of model parameters.
Abstract: Maximum likelihood or restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates of the parameters in linear mixed-effects models can be determined using the lmer function in the lme4 package for R. As for most model-fitting functions in R, the model is described in an lmer call by a formula, in this case including both fixed- and random-effects terms. The formula and data together determine a numerical representation of the model from which the profiled deviance or the profiled REML criterion can be evaluated as a function of some of the model parameters. The appropriate criterion is optimized, using one of the constrained optimization functions in R, to provide the parameter estimates. We describe the structure of the model, the steps in evaluating the profiled deviance or REML criterion, and the structure of classes or types that represents such a model. Sufficient detail is included to allow specialization of these structures by users who wish to write functions to fit specialized linear mixed models, such as models incorporating pedigrees or smoothing splines, that are not easily expressible in the formula language used by lmer.
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TL;DR: This work has shown that predation is a major selective force in the evolution of several morphological and behavioral characteristics of animals and the importance of predation during evolutionary time has been underestimated.
Abstract: Predation has long been implicated as a major selective force in the evolution of several morphological and behavioral characteristics of animals. The importance of predation during evolutionary ti...
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TL;DR: A graphical method is discussed which allows a specification of the optimal diet of a predator in terms of the net amount of energy gained from a capture of prey as compared to the energy expended in searching for the prey.
Abstract: A graphical method is discussed which allows a specification of the optimal diet of a predator in terms of the net amount of energy gained from a capture of prey as compared to the energy expended in searching for the prey. The method allows several predictions about changes in the degree of specialization of the diet as the numbers of different prey organisms change. For example, a more productive environment should lead to more restricted diet in numbers of different species eaten. In a patchy environment, however, this will not apply to predators that spend most of their time searching. Moreover, larger patches are used in a more specialized way than smaller patches.
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TL;DR: The existence of behavioral syndromes focuses the attention of behavioral ecologists on limited (less than optimal) behavioral plasticity and behavioral carryovers across situations, rather than on optimal plasticity in each isolated situation.
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that populations and species often exhibit behavioral syndromes; that is, suites of correlated behaviors across situations. An example is an aggression syndrome where some individuals are more aggressive, whereas others are less aggressive across a range of situations and contexts. The existence of behavioral syndromes focuses the attention of behavioral ecologists on limited (less than optimal) behavioral plasticity and behavioral carryovers across situations, rather than on optimal plasticity in each isolated situation. Behavioral syndromes can explain behaviors that appear strikingly non-adaptive in an isolated context (e.g. inappropriately high activity when predators are present, or excessive sexual cannibalism). Behavioral syndromes can also help to explain the maintenance of individual variation in behavioral types, a phenomenon that is ubiquitous, but often ignored. Recent studies suggest that the behavioral type of an individual, population or species can have important ecological and evolutionary implications, including major effects on species distributions, on the relative tendencies of species to be invasive or to respond well to environmental change, and on speciation rates. Although most studies of behavioral syndromes to date have focused on a few organisms, mainly in the laboratory, further work on other species, particularly in the field, should yield numerous new insights.
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TL;DR: Advances in human lesion-mapping support the functional localization of such inhibition to right IFC alone, and future research should investigate the generality of this proposed inhibitory function to other task domains, and its interaction within a wider network.
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