Abstract
Author SummaryAnimals with higher cognitive abilities should be better capable of producing new, modified, or innovative behaviors as this ability could allow them to cope better with unpredictable environmental changes. Changing environments may hence select for higher cognitive abilities. Similarly, changing conditions during ontogeny can cause plastic responses, helping individuals to adapt to their current environment. In this study, we have used the cichlid fish Simochromis pleurospilus to show experimentally that individuals subjected to a change in food ration early in life (i.e., low to high or vice versa) outperform fish kept on constant rations in a learning task later in life. Remarkably, this result was independent of the direction of the implemented change or the average amount of food each fish received, and the results in the juvenile stage did not change in adulthood. Our results suggest that a single environmental change early in life might enhance cognitive abilities in animals.
Highlights
The ability of adapting to changes in the environment is an important driving force of evolution, as recognized already by Darwin in his famous quote: ‘‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives...it is the one that is the most adaptable to change’’ [1]
Individual S. pleurospilus that had experienced a change in food ration early in life outperformed those fish kept on constant rations in a learning task, suggesting that changes in environmental quality triggered a better cognitive performance in these fish
This result was independent of the direction of the implemented change and the mean rations received
Summary
The ability of adapting to changes in the environment is an important driving force of evolution, as recognized already by Darwin in his famous quote: ‘‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives...it is the one that is the most adaptable to change’’ [1]. Animals may adapt by altering their behavior, physiology, or morphology. The construction of behavioral responses is thought to be the fastest and most flexible way of adapting to new situations. Animals often have to deal with new situations for which they must devise novel or flexible solutions [2]. Field observations and laboratory studies showed that the advantages of novel or altered behaviors increase with the complexity of the environment (reviewed in [3,4]). This suggests that frequent and unpredictable environmental changes may select for increased cognitive abilities allowing animals to meet these challenges by constructing adequate behavioral responses. For example, the complexity of songs is assumed to reflect their cognitive abilities, and species inhabiting areas with a low predictability of climatic patterns show more elaborate song displays than species in stable environments [5]
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