Abstract
Balancing foraging gain and predation risk is a fundamental trade-off in the life of animals. Individual strategies to acquire, process, store and use information to solve cognitive tasks are likely to affect speed and flexibility of learning, and ecologically relevant decisions regarding foraging and predation risk. Theory suggests a functional link between individual variation in cognitive style and behaviour (animal personality) via speed-accuracy and risk-reward trade-offs. We tested whether cognitive style and personality affect risk-reward trade-off decisions posed by foraging and predation risk. We exposed 21 bank voles (Myodes glareolus) that were bold, fast learning and inflexible and 18 voles that were shy, slow learning and flexible to outdoor enclosures with different risk levels at two food patches. We quantified individual food patch exploitation, foraging and vigilance behaviour. Although both types responded to risk, fast animals increasingly exploited both food patches, gaining access to more food and spending less time searching and exercising vigilance. Slow animals progressively avoided high-risk areas, concentrating foraging effort in the low-risk one, and devoting >50% of visit to vigilance. These patterns indicate that individual differences in cognitive style/personality are reflected in foraging and anti-predator decisions that underlie the individual risk-reward bias.
Highlights
The ability to gear decisions optimally towards environmental conditions is a fundamental determinant of fitness
Cognitive style refers to the specific strategy by which individuals process, store or act on information to solve a cognitive task (e.g.12,14,15), which is expected to be consistent across time and contexts[12,14]
Based on giving-up density (GUD) and behavioural observations, we showed that individuals with different cognitive style/personality approach the same risk-reward trade-off in a different way
Summary
The ability to gear decisions optimally towards environmental conditions is a fundamental determinant of fitness. In a recent theoretical framework Sih and Del Giudice[12] suggested a functional link between personality types and cognitive styles based on shared risk-reward and speed-accuracy/flexibility trade-offs which is task- and context-dependent. Shy, slow exploring and reactive animals that are more sensitive to environmental stimuli and more flexible in their behaviour, are suggested to be slower in mastering new activity-based tasks, and to store more information for longer periods of time and be less challenged in avoidance and reversal learning tasks (e.g.12,14,16,17). There is evidence that cognitive performance might be affected by a combination of personality, the kind of reinforcement (positive or negative) used in the learning contingency (e.g.46) and the nature of the stress (related or unrelated in time and space with the learning experience, e.g.47) experienced by the individual In this case, results seem context- and task-dependent. A few studies have considered the ultimate consequences of a cognitive style/personality syndrome, which could give insight into its evolution and maintenance (e.g.39)
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