Maille Audrey, Schradin Carsten
IPHC-DEPE, Université de Strasbourg, 67087 Strasbourg, France School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 75005 Paris, France
IPHC-DEPE, Université de Strasbourg, 67087 Strasbourg, France School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Biol Lett. 2016 Aug;12(8). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0346.
Studying the association between fitness and cognition in free-living animals is a fundamental step in the elucidation of the evolution of cognition. We assessed whether survival until the onset of the breeding season was related to reaction time or spatial memory in the African striped mouse Rhabdomys pumilio, a rodent that has to survive summer drought before breeding. We tested a total of 90 individuals at the beginning of summer. Female survival was related to a faster response to predation stimuli. Male survival increased with greater spatial memory, possibly because it is important for males to remember the configuration of the environment during dispersal. This study revealed that individual variation in reaction time and spatial memory can be related to survival probability, which is important for understanding the selection pressures acting on basic cognitive traits.
研究自由生活动物的健康状况与认知能力之间的关联，是阐明认知进化过程中的关键一步。我们评估了在非洲条纹小鼠（Rhabdomys pumilio）中，活到繁殖季节开始时的生存情况是否与反应时间或空间记忆有关。非洲条纹小鼠是一种啮齿动物，必须在夏季干旱中存活下来才能繁殖。我们在夏季开始时总共测试了90只个体。雌性的生存与对捕食刺激的更快反应有关。雄性的生存随着空间记忆能力的增强而增加，这可能是因为对于雄性来说，在扩散过程中记住环境的布局很重要。这项研究表明，反应时间和空间记忆的个体差异可能与生存概率相关，这对于理解作用于基本认知特征的选择压力很重要。
