Animal Cognition Lab

Research topics

Individual differences in animal cognition

Cognitive research in animals is mostly interested in comparing different species. Yet, it is still not clear how interspecific differences evolve. A prerequisite for evolutionary changes should be the presence of within-species variability, i.e. differences between individuals. My research mainly investigates this aspect of animal cognition. My experiments are providing evidence that learning, memory and executive functions such as cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control vary greatly within species in fish and amphibians. To understand the causes of this variability, I explore direct sources of selection focussing on cognitive tasks directly related fitness, such as choosing foraging patches and evading predators. Moreover, I look for indirect sources of selection such as covariation with behaviour, personality and lateralisation. For a review on the topic see: Lucon-Xiccato T., Bisazza A. (2017) Behav Proc.

Sex differences in animal cognition

Cognitive sex differences are a form of within-species variability that is particularly interesting to understand how cognition evolves. Males and females of many species often have to perform different behaviours because, for example, they live in different parts of the environment, have different home range sizes, hunt different prey, or suffer different predation risk. In addition, males and females may have different reproductive roles, and only one of the two sexes perform mate choice or parental cares. These sex-specific tasks may provide selective pressures for the evolution of cognitive sex differences. My experiments on fish, and in particular guppies, try do discover these sex differences. For example, my studies have showed that female guppies have greater cognitive flexibility than males but males show improved spatial learning. Most of these sex differences seem associated to specific selective pressures, making guppies a promising model to understand cognitive evolution.

Cognitive abilities of lower vertebrates

Lower vertebrates are particularly important for the research topics of above. For example, fishes represent approximately half of living vertebrate species, with a large variability in ecology and reproductive roles of the two sexes useful to study cognitive sex differences. Moreover, in the laboratory, fish can be housed and tested in large numbers, favouring research on individual differences. However, literature on a specific cognitive ability is often scarce for lower vertebrates. For this reason, most of my projects start with pilot studies to describe a specific ability in the species of interest and develop efficient procedures to measure it. Some of these cognitive triats are visual discrimination learning, foraging decisions, refuge choice, numerical abilities, memory, and inhibitory control. Thanks to our collaborators, we can exploit mutant animals to explore the mechanisms of these cognitive abilities. Methodologies developed in our laboratory can be also seen in this section.

Cognitive ecology

To investigate the role of cognitive abilities and individual differences in animals’ fitness, we also conduct research on the field. The study system is based on amphibian larvae. In many species, tadpoles undergo an extreme survival bottleneck due to predation and other challenges, with only 5 % of individuals surviving. This scenario is perfect to study how a cognitive trait allows animals to survive in their environment. The field station is located close to an artificial ponds where frogs, treefrogs and toads naturally breed. We perform behavioural observations on predator recognition and responses of tadpoles and for some species also in adults. This system is also showing potential to study plasticity of cognitive functions.

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