Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.

Flexible or innovative behavior is advantageous, especially when animals are exposed to frequent and unpredictable environmental perturbations. Improved cognitive abilities can help animals to respond quickly and adequately to environmental dynamics, and therefore changing environments may select fo...

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Autores principales:	Alexander Kotrschal, Barbara Taborsky
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2010
Materias:	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/21451f9ff68242398e3b46c2bb54007d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:21451f9ff68242398e3b46c2bb54007d2021-11-25T05:34:18ZEnvironmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.1544-91731545-788510.1371/journal.pbio.1000351https://doaj.org/article/21451f9ff68242398e3b46c2bb54007d2010-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/20386729/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1544-9173https://doaj.org/toc/1545-7885Flexible or innovative behavior is advantageous, especially when animals are exposed to frequent and unpredictable environmental perturbations. Improved cognitive abilities can help animals to respond quickly and adequately to environmental dynamics, and therefore changing environments may select for higher cognitive abilities. Increased cognitive abilities can be attained, for instance, if environmental change during ontogeny triggers plastic adaptive responses improving the learning capacity of exposed individuals. We tested the learning abilities of fishes in response to experimental variation of environmental quality during ontogeny. Individuals of the cichlid fish Simochromis pleurospilus that experienced a change in food ration early in life outperformed fish kept on constant rations in a learning task later in life--irrespective of the direction of the implemented change and the mean rations received. This difference in learning abilities between individuals remained constant between juvenile and adult stages of the same fish tested 1 y apart. Neither environmental enrichment nor training through repeated neural stimulation can explain our findings, as the sensory environment was kept constant and resource availability was changed only once. Instead, our results indicate a pathway by which a single change in resource availability early in life permanently enhances the learning abilities of animals. Early perturbations of environmental quality may signal the developing individual that it lives in a changing world, requiring increased cognitive abilities to construct adequate behavioral responses.Alexander KotrschalBarbara TaborskyPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleBiology (General)QH301-705.5ENPLoS Biology, Vol 8, Iss 4, p e1000351 (2010)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Biology (General) QH301-705.5
spellingShingle	Biology (General) QH301-705.5 Alexander Kotrschal Barbara Taborsky Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
description	Flexible or innovative behavior is advantageous, especially when animals are exposed to frequent and unpredictable environmental perturbations. Improved cognitive abilities can help animals to respond quickly and adequately to environmental dynamics, and therefore changing environments may select for higher cognitive abilities. Increased cognitive abilities can be attained, for instance, if environmental change during ontogeny triggers plastic adaptive responses improving the learning capacity of exposed individuals. We tested the learning abilities of fishes in response to experimental variation of environmental quality during ontogeny. Individuals of the cichlid fish Simochromis pleurospilus that experienced a change in food ration early in life outperformed fish kept on constant rations in a learning task later in life--irrespective of the direction of the implemented change and the mean rations received. This difference in learning abilities between individuals remained constant between juvenile and adult stages of the same fish tested 1 y apart. Neither environmental enrichment nor training through repeated neural stimulation can explain our findings, as the sensory environment was kept constant and resource availability was changed only once. Instead, our results indicate a pathway by which a single change in resource availability early in life permanently enhances the learning abilities of animals. Early perturbations of environmental quality may signal the developing individual that it lives in a changing world, requiring increased cognitive abilities to construct adequate behavioral responses.
format	article
author	Alexander Kotrschal Barbara Taborsky
author_facet	Alexander Kotrschal Barbara Taborsky
author_sort	Alexander Kotrschal
title	Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
title_short	Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
title_full	Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
title_fullStr	Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
title_full_unstemmed	Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
title_sort	environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2010
url	https://doaj.org/article/21451f9ff68242398e3b46c2bb54007d
work_keys_str_mv	AT alexanderkotrschal environmentalchangeenhancescognitiveabilitiesinfish AT barbarataborsky environmentalchangeenhancescognitiveabilitiesinfish
_version_	1718414564112990208

Environmental change enhances cognitive abilities in fish.

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