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Author |
Magat, M.; Brown, C. |
Title |
Laterality enhances cognition in Australian parrots |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2009 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
276 |
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1676 |
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4155-4162 |
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Cerebral lateralization refers to the division of information processing in either hemisphere of the brain and is a ubiquitous trait among vertebrates and invertebrates. Given its widespread occurrence, it is likely that cerebral lateralization confers a fitness advantage. It has been hypothesized that this advantage takes the form of enhanced cognitive function, potentially via a dual processing mechanism whereby each hemisphere can be used to process specific types of information without contralateral interference. Here, we examined the influence of lateralization on problem solving by Australian parrots. The first task, a pebble-seed discrimination test, was designed for small parrot species that feed predominately on small seeds, which do not require any significant manipulation with the foot prior to ingestion. The second task, a string-pull problem, was designed for larger bodied species that regularly use their feet to manipulate food objects. In both cases, strongly lateralized individuals (those showing significant foot and eye biases) outperformed less strongly lateralized individuals, and this relationship was substantially stronger in the more demanding task. These results suggest that cerebral lateralization is a ubiquitous trait among Australian parrots and conveys a significant foraging advantage. Our results provide strong support for the enhanced cognitive function hypothesis. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5380 |
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Dickens, M.J.; Delehanty, D.J.; Romero, L.M. |
Title |
Stress and translocation: alterations in the stress physiology of translocated birds |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2009 |
Publication |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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276 |
Issue |
1664 |
Pages |
2051-2056 |
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Translocation and reintroduction have become major conservation actions in attempts to create self-sustaining wild populations of threatened species. However, avian translocations have a high failure rate and causes for failure are poorly understood. While ‘stress’ is often cited as an important factor in translocation failure, empirical evidence of physiological stress is lacking. Here we show that experimental translocation leads to changes in the physiological stress response in chukar partridge, Alectoris chukar. We found that capture alone significantly decreased the acute glucocorticoid (corticosterone, CORT) response, but adding exposure to captivity and transport further altered the stress response axis (the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis) as evident from a decreased sensitivity of the negative feedback system. Animals that were exposed to the entire translocation procedure, in addition to the reduced acute stress response and disrupted negative feedback, had significantly lower baseline CORT concentrations and significantly reduced body weight. These data indicate that translocation alters stress physiology and that chronic stress is potentially a major factor in translocation failure. Under current practices, the restoration of threatened species through translocation may unwittingly depend on the success of chronically stressed individuals. This conclusion emphasizes the need for understanding and alleviating translocation-induced chronic stress in order to use most effectively this important conservation tool. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5582 |
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Gerber, B.; Hendel, T. |
Title |
Outcome expectations drive learned behaviour in larval Drosophila |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2006 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
273 |
Issue |
1604 |
Pages |
2965-2968 |
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Why does Pavlov's dog salivate? In response to the tone, or in expectation of food? While in vertebrates behaviour can be driven by expected outcomes, it is unknown whether this is true for non-vertebrates as well. We find that, in the Drosophila larva, odour memories are expressed behaviourally only if animals can expect a positive outcome from doing so. The expected outcome of tracking down an odour is determined by comparing the value of the current situation with the value of the memory for that odour. Memory is expressed behaviourally only if the expected outcome is positive. This uncovers a hitherto unrecognized evaluative processing step between an activated memory trace and behaviour control, and argues that learned behaviour reflects the pursuit of its expected outcome. Shown in a system with a simple brain, an apparently cognitive process like representing the expected outcome of behaviour seems to be a basic feature of behaviour control. |
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refbase @ user @ |
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3525 |
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Hunt, G.R.; Gray, R.D. |
Title |
The crafting of hook tools by wild New Caledonian crows |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
271 |
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Pages |
S88-S90 |
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The 'crafting' of tools involves (i) selection of appropriate raw material, (ii) preparatory trimming and (iii) fine, three-dimensional sculpting. Its evolution is technologically important because it allows the open-ended development of tools. New Caledonian crows manufacture an impressive range of stick and leaf tools. We previously reported that their toolkit included hooked implements made from leafy twigs, although their manufacture had never been closely observed. We describe the manufacture of 10 hooked-twig tools by an adult crow and its dependent juvenile. To make all 10 tools, the crows carried out a relatively invariant three-step sequence of complex manipulations that involved (i) the selection of raw material, (ii) trimming and (iii) a lengthy sculpting of the hook. Hooked-twig manufacture contrasts with the lack of sculpting in the making of wooden tools by other non-humans such as chimpanzees and woodpecker finches. This fine, three-stage crafting process removes another alleged difference between humans and other animals. |
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refbase @ user @ |
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3526 |
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Griffiths,S. W.; Brockmark, S.; Höjesjö,J.; Johnsson,J. I. |
Title |
Coping with divided attention: the advantage of familiarity |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
271 |
Issue |
1540 |
Pages |
695-699 |
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The ability of an animal to perform a task successfully is limited by the amount of attention being simultaneously focused on other activities. One way in which individuals might reduce the cost of divided attention is by preferentially focusing on the most beneficial tasks. In territorial animals where aggression is lower among familiar individuals, the decision to associate preferentially with familiar conspecifics may therefore confer advantages by allowing attention to be switched from aggression to predator vigilance and feeding. Wild juvenile brown trout were used to test the prediction that familiar fishes respond more quickly than unfamiliar fishes to a simulated predator attack. Our results confirm this prediction by demonstrating that familiar trout respond 14% faster than unfamiliar individuals to a predator attack. The results also show that familiar fishes consume a greater number of food items, foraging at more than twice the rate of unfamiliar conspecifics. To the best of our knowledge, these results provide the first evidence that familiarity–biased association confers advantages through the immediate fitness benefits afforded by faster predator–evasion responses and the long–term benefits provided by increased feeding opportunities. |
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10.1098/rspb.2003.2648 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5007 |
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Bugnyar, T.; Stöwe, M.; Heinrich, B. |
Title |
Ravens, Corvus corax, follow gaze direction of humans around obstacles |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
271 |
Issue |
1546 |
Pages |
1331-1336 |
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The ability to follow gaze (i.e. head and eye direction) has recently been shown for social mammals, particularly primates. In most studies, individuals could use gaze direction as a behavioural cue without understanding that the view of others may be different from their own. Here, we show that hand–raised ravens not only visually co–orient with the look–ups of a human experimenter but also reposition themselves to follow the experimenter's gaze around a visual barrier. Birds were capable of visual co–orientation already as fledglings but consistently tracked gaze direction behind obstacles not before six months of age. These results raise the possibility that sub–adult and adult ravens can project a line of sight for the other person into the distance. To what extent ravens may attribute mental significance to the visual behaviour of others is discussed. |
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10.1098/rspb.2004.2738 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5009 |
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Tibbetts, E.A. |
Title |
Visual signals of individual identity in the wasp Polistes fuscatus |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2002 |
Publication |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
Volume |
269 |
Issue |
1423 |
Pages |
1423-1428 |
Keywords |
hymenoptera; individual-recognition; learning-insect |
Abstract |
Individual recognition is an essential component of interactions in many social systems, but insects are often thought incapable of the sophistication necessary to recognize individuals. If this were true, it would impose limits on the societies that insects could form. For example, queens and workers of the paper wasp Polistes fuscatus form a linear dominance hierarchy that determines how food, work and reproduction are divided within the colony. Such a stable hierarchy would be facilitated if individuals of different ranks have some degree of recognition. P. fuscatus wasps have, to our knowledge, previously undocumented variability in their yellow facial and abdominal markings that are intriguing candidates for signals of individual identity. Here, I describe these highly variable markings and experimentally test whether P. fuscatus queens and workers use these markings to identify individual nest-mates visually. I demonstrate that individuals whose yellow markings are experimentally altered with paint receive more aggression than control wasps who are painted in a way that does not alter their markings. Further, aggression declines towards wasps with experimentally altered markings as these novel markings become familiar to their nestmates. This evidence for individual recognition in P. fuscatus indicates that interactions between insects may be even more complex than previously anticipated.
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ 929 |
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4732 |
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Johnstone, R.A.; Dugatkin, L.A. |
Title |
Coalition formation in animals and the nature of winner and loser effects |
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Journal Article |
Year |
2000 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
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267 |
Issue |
1438 |
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17-21 |
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Coalition formation has been documented in a diverse array of taxa, yet there has been little formal analysis of polyadic interactions such as coalitions. Here, we develop an optimality model which examines the role of winner and loser effects in shaping coalition formation. We demonstrate that the predicted patterns of alliances are strongly dependent on the way in which winner and loser effects change with contestant strength. When winner and loser effects decrease with the resource-holding power (RHP) of the combatants, coalitions will be favoured between the strongest members of a group, but not between the weakest. If, in contrast, winner and loser effects increase with RHP, exactly the opposite predictions emerge. All other things being equal, intervention is more likely to prove worthwhile when the beneficiary of the aid is weaker (and its opponent is stronger), because the beneficiary is then less likely to win without help. Consequently, intervention is more probable when the impact of victory on the subsequent performance of a combatant increases with that individual's strength because this selects for intervention in favour of weaker combatants. The published literature on hierarchy formation does not reveal how winner and loser effects actually change with contestant strength and we therefore hope that our model will spur others to collect such data; in this light we suggest an experiment which will help to elucidate the nature of winner and loser effects and their impact on coalition formation in animals. |
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* aggression * dominance * hierarchy * intervention * reciprocity |
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10.1098/rspb.2000.0960 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5290 |
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C. K. Hemelrijk, |
Title |
An individual-orientated model of the emergence of despotic and egalitarian societies |
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1999 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
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266 |
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1417 |
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361-361 |
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Single behavioural differences between egalitarian and despotic animal societies are often assumed to reflect specific adaptations. However, in the present paper, I will show in an individual-orientated model, how many behavioural traits of egalitarian and despotic virtual societies arise as emergent characteristics. The artificial entities live in a homogeneous world and only aggregate, and upon meeting one another and may perform dominance interactions in which the effects of winning and losing are self-reinforcing. The behaviour of these entities is studied in a similar way to that of real animals. It will be shown that by varying the intensity of aggression only, one may switch from egalitarian to despotic virtual societies. Differences between the two types of society appear to correspond closely to those between despotic and egalitarian macaque species in the real world. In addition, artificial despotic societies show a clearer spatial centrality of dominants and, counter-intuitively, more rank overlap between the sexes than the egalitarian ones. Because of the correspondence with patterns in real animals, the model makes it worthwhile comparing despotic and egalitarian species for socio-spatial structure and rank overlap too. Furthermore, it presents us with parsimonious hypotheses which can be tested in real animals for patterns of aggression, spatial structure and the distribution of social positive and sexual behaviour. |
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refbase @ user @ |
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862 |
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Oliveira, R. F.; McGregor, P.K.; Latruffe, C. |
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Know thine enemy: fighting fish gather information from observing conspecific interactions |
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1998 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. |
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265 |
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1401 |
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1045-1049 |
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Many of the signals that animals use to communicate transmit relatively large distances and therefore encompass several potential signallers and receivers. This observation challenges the common characterization of animal communication systems as consisting of one signaller and one receiver. Furthermore, it suggests that the evolution of communication behaviour must be considered as occurring in the context of communication networks rather than dyads. Although considerations of selection pressures acting upon signallers in the context of communication networks have rarely been expressed in such terms, it has been noted that many signals exchanged during aggressive interactions will transmit far further than required for information transfer between the individuals directly involved, suggesting that these signals have been designed to be received by other, more distant, individuals. Here we consider the potential for receivers in communication networks to gather information, one aspect of which has been termed eavesdropping. We show that male Betta splendens monitor aggressive interactions between neighbouring conspecifics and use the information on relative fighting ability in subsequent aggressive interactions with the males they have observed. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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2168 |
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