Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Biol Lett. 2012 Feb 23;8(1):28-30. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0480. Epub 2011 Jul 13.
The role of behavioural flexibility in responding to new or changing environmental challenges is a central theme in cognitive ecology. Studies of behavioural flexibility have focused mostly on mammals and birds because theory predicts that behavioural flexibility is favoured in species or clades that exploit a diversity of habitats or food sources and/or have complex social structure, attributes not associated with ectothermic vertebrates. Here, we present the results of a series of experiments designed to test cognitive abilities across multiple cognitive modules in a tropical arboreal lizard: Anolis evermanni. This lizard shows behavioural flexibility across multiple cognitive tasks, including solving a novel motor task using multiple strategies and reversal learning, as well as rapid associative learning. This flexibility was unexpected because lizards are commonly believed to have limited cognitive abilities and highly stereotyped behaviour. Our findings indicate that the cognitive abilities of A. evermanni are comparable with those of some endothermic species that are recognized to be highly flexible, and strongly suggest a re-thinking of our understanding of the cognitive abilities of ectothermic tetrapods and of the factors favouring the evolution of behavioural flexibility.
行为灵活性在应对新的或不断变化的环境挑战中的作用是认知生态学的一个核心主题。行为灵活性的研究主要集中在哺乳动物和鸟类上，因为理论预测行为灵活性在那些利用多种栖息地或食物来源和/或具有复杂社会结构的物种或进化枝中是有利的，而这些特征与变温脊椎动物无关。在这里，我们展示了一系列旨在测试热带树栖蜥蜴——A. evermanni 多个认知模块认知能力的实验结果。这种蜥蜴在多个认知任务中表现出行为灵活性，包括使用多种策略解决新的运动任务和反转学习，以及快速联想学习。这种灵活性是出乎意料的，因为通常认为蜥蜴的认知能力有限，行为模式非常刻板。我们的研究结果表明，A. evermanni 的认知能力与一些被认为具有高度灵活性的温血动物相当，这强烈表明我们需要重新思考我们对变温四足动物认知能力的理解，以及有利于行为灵活性进化的因素。
