Abstract

Whether learning primarily reflects general processes or species-specific challenges is a long-standing matter of dispute. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of public information use (PI-use) in sticklebacks (Gasterosteidae). PI-use is a form of social learning by which animals are able to assess the relative quality of resources, here prey patches, by observing the behaviour of others. PI-use was highly specific with only Pungitius and their closest relative Culaea inconstans showing evidence of PI-use. We saw no effects of ontogenetic experience upon PI-use in Pungitius pungitius. Experiments with live demonstrators and animated fish revealed that heightened activity and feeding strikes by foraging conspecifics are important cues in the transmission of PI. Finally, PI-use was the only form of learning in which P. pungitius and another stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus differed. PI-use in sticklebacks is species-specific and may represent an ‘ecological specialization’ for social foraging. Whether this reflects selection on perception, attentional or cognitive processes remains to be determined.

Highlights

  • We focused upon the function of public information use (PI-use), by comparing other forms of social information use and asocial learning between G. aculeatus and P. pungitius in order to determine whether differences in PI-use between the two species reflect a general difference in learning ability or a specialization, possibly related to foraging, in P. pungitius

  • We saw differences between species, an effect of treatment and an interaction between the two (F1,74 1⁄4 6.67, p 1⁄4 0.011; F1,74 1⁄4 6.08, p 1⁄4 0.016; F1,74 1⁄4 4.49, p 1⁄4 0.037, figure 5a). Both species showed a clear preference for the goal zone closest to the more active demonstrators in the real-time treatment, but P. pungitius spent more time in the active group goal zone than did G. aculeatus in the PI treatment, with the latter showing no preference for either goal zone

  • Does PI-use function as a form or component of social foraging, or does it reflect and covary with a general difference in how stickleback species learn? In this final series of experiments, we investigated the specificity of the species difference in learning seen in §§3 and 5, by exploring whether there were 18 other differences in the social or asocial learning of P. pungitius and G. aculeatus

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Summary

Introduction

PI-use in sticklebacks is species-specific and may represent an ‘ecological specialization’ for social foraging Whether this reflects selection on perception, attentional or cognitive processes remains to be determined. The extent to which the learning abilities of animals are shaped by natural selection in response to species-specific ecological challenges or by general processes varying little across taxa has long been a matter of dispute [1,2,3,4]. This issue lay at the heart of debates between ethologists and comparative psychologists in mid-twentieth century and has resurfaced in recent discussions of evolutionary psychology, cognitive ecology and cultural evolution [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. The existence of social learning adaptations remains contentious [2,4,22,23]

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