The role of proximate factors in shaping individual cognitive variation of great tits
Loading...
Files
Date
2021-03-31
Authors
Cooke, Amy C.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
Cognition is defined as the mechanisms that allow animals process, store and act on information. These mechanisms mediate behaviour and how animals interact with their environment. Yet not all individuals behave the same. While much of this variation may be attributed to differences in cognitive abilities among individuals, our understanding of why individuals vary in cognitive performance is limited. Examining the factors that drive individual variation in cognition is fundamental for understanding its adaptive significance, particularly when factors that determine how well an individual performs on a task may or may not be heritable. The aim of my thesis was to investigate how a range of distinct and understudied proximate factors shape individual variation in cognitive performance in great tits (Parus major) across different problem-solving and cognitive tasks. Using a multi-access problem-solving device to test sequential innovative problem-solving performance, I discovered that food-related motivation drives innovativeness and likelihood of solving, while previous experience drives accuracy and that individuals show repeatable differences in their accuracy and ability to solve. Between individual differences in problem solving performance were explained entirely by accuracy, motivation, and positive feedback loop caused by previous experience. Food is fundamental for survival and reproduction and food quality impacts cognition and behaviour. In my third chapter I found that diet correlated with problem-solving success, while personality correlated with the proportion of arachidonic acid, an ω-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid that is crucial for normal development and functioning of the brain. Great tits experience varying levels of predation risk as they forage in complex and fluctuating environments, but little is known about the effect of predation risk on learning and cognition in the context of foraging. In Chapter 4 I show that under high predation, birds demonstrated greater behavioural flexibility compared to those under low predation risk and displayed worse spatial memory for their reward location than those under medium or low predation risk. In Chapter 5 I take the spatio-temporal learning paradigm into the wild, and explore the effects of species, age and distance between feeders on discrimination and temporal learning. I show for the first time in the wild that both great tits and blue tits are capable of temporal and reversal temporal learning, but performance in any of these metrics were not correlated among individuals. Shorter distances between feeders resulted in faster discrimination learning performance, but had no effect on temporal learning. My thesis demonstrates how a variety of underexplored proximate factors explain individual variation in cognitive performance, emphasising the challenges faced when measuring cognition generally but especially in the wild.
Description
Keywords
Cognition , Great tits , Parus major , Problem solving , Diet , Predation , Learning , Animal behaviour
Citation
Cooke, A. C. 2021. The role of proximate factors in shaping individual cognitive variation of great tits. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.