Time‐of‐Day Discriminative Learning: Contrasting the Use of Spatial Compared to Feature Information in Homing Pigeons (Columba livia)

Abstract

AbstractThis study examined time‐of‐day associative learning to either spatial or feature information in homing pigeons in an open‐field, laboratory setting. Homing pigeons are well known for their navigational abilities and generally have been shown to rely more heavily on spatial than nonspatial cues in recognizing a goal. However, during goal localization, homing pigeons also successfully use nonspatial, feature information. Homing pigeons were divided into two groups and were trained to locate two time‐of‐day dependent, food reward sites using either discriminative spatial or feature information. Because of the importance of the hippocampus in controlling avian memory, we hypothesized that homing pigeons trained with spatial cues would be superior in learning the time‐of‐day discrimination compared to the pigeons trained with feature cues. Indeed, homing pigeons that were trained with spatial information outperformed the pigeons trained with feature information in learning the time‐of‐day discrimination task.