Liedtke J, Schneider J M
Zoologisches Institut, Universität Hamburg, Biozentrum Grindel, Hamburg, Germany.
Anim Cogn. 2017 Nov;20(6):1093-1106. doi: 10.1007/s10071-017-1125-3. Epub 2017 Aug 22.
There is a long-standing debate as to whether social or physical environmental aspects drive the evolution and development of cognitive abilities. Surprisingly few studies make use of developmental plasticity to compare the effects of these two domains during development on behaviour later in life. Here, we present rearing effects on the development of learning abilities and social behaviour in the jumping spider Marpissa muscosa. These spiders are ideally suited for this purpose because they possess the ability to learn and can be reared in groups but also in isolation without added stress. This is a critical but rarely met requirement for experimentally varying the social environment to test its impact on cognition. We split broods of spiders and reared them either in a physically or in a socially enriched environment. A third group kept under completely deprived conditions served as a 'no-enrichment' control. We tested the spiders' learning abilities by using a modified T-maze. Social behaviour was investigated by confronting spiders with their own mirror image. Results show that spiders reared in groups outperform their conspecifics from the control, i.e. 'no-enrichment', group in both tasks. Physical enrichment did not lead to such an increased performance. We therefore tentatively suggest that growing up in contact with conspecifics induces the development of cognitive abilities in this species.
关于社会环境或物理环境因素是否驱动认知能力的进化和发展，存在长期的争论。令人惊讶的是，很少有研究利用发育可塑性来比较这两个领域在发育过程中对后期行为的影响。在这里，我们展示了饲养环境对跳蛛Marpissa muscosa学习能力和社会行为发展的影响。这些蜘蛛非常适合用于此目的，因为它们具有学习能力，可以成群饲养，也可以单独饲养而不会增加压力。这是通过实验改变社会环境以测试其对认知的影响的关键但很少满足的要求。我们将蜘蛛幼体分开，分别饲养在物理环境丰富或社会环境丰富的环境中。第三组饲养在完全剥夺条件下作为“无丰富化”对照。我们使用改良的T型迷宫测试蜘蛛的学习能力。通过让蜘蛛面对自己的镜像来研究社会行为。结果表明，成群饲养的蜘蛛在两项任务中的表现均优于对照组，即“无丰富化”组的同种个体。物理环境丰富并没有导致这种表现的提高。因此，我们初步认为，与同种个体接触成长会促进该物种认知能力的发展。
