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Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

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Date
22/02/2021
Author
Jones, Nick A.R.
Spence-Jones, Helen Clare
Webster, Mike
Rendell, Luke Edward
Keywords
Social context
Inter-individual differences
Social learning
Toxotes
Exploratory tendency
Learning
QH301 Biology
DAS
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Abstract
Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning.
Citation
Jones , N A R , Spence-Jones , H C , Webster , M & Rendell , L E 2021 , ' Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish ' , Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology , vol. 75 , 58 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-02996-4
Publication
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-02996-4
ISSN
0340-5443
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
This study was funded by the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (studentship to NARJ).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21484

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