Lucon-Xiccato Tyrone, Bertolucci Cristiano
Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy.
Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy.
Behav Processes. 2019 Jul;164:91-99. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2019.04.011. Epub 2019 Apr 16.
To cope with the variable environment, animals are continuously required to learn novel behaviours or, in certain cases, to inhibit automatic and previously learned behaviours. Traditionally, inhibition has been regarded as cognitively demanding and studied mostly in primates, other mammals and birds, using laboratory tasks, such as the cylinder task. Recent studies have also revealed that fish show high levels of inhibition in the cylinder task. However, conclusions on such results are undermined by evidence that the cylinder task may be inappropriate to compare such phylogenetically distant species. Here, we studied whether a fish, the guppy, Poecilia reticulata, could learn to inhibit behaviour using a different paradigm, which exploited spontaneous foraging behaviour and overcame some drawbacks that characterised the cylinder task. We exposed guppies to live brine shrimp nauplii, Artemia salina, enclosed within a transparent tube. Initially, the guppies attempted to attack the prey but over time showed a rapid decrease of the attacks. Control tests seemed to exclude the possibility that this behavioural trend was due to response to novelty or habituation, and suggested that the guppies were learning to inhibit the foraging behaviour. Memory tests indicated that guppies retained the inhibition of foraging behaviour for at least 24 h. Our study seems to indicate that teleost fish display rapid and durable inhibition of spontaneous foraging behaviour; this may be related to previous evidence, from the cylinder task, supporting efficient behavioural inhibition in this taxon.
为了应对多变的环境，动物不断需要学习新的行为，或者在某些情况下，抑制自动的和先前习得的行为。传统上，抑制被认为需要认知能力，并且主要在灵长类动物、其他哺乳动物和鸟类中进行研究，使用诸如圆筒任务等实验室任务。最近的研究还表明，鱼类在圆筒任务中表现出高水平的抑制能力。然而，由于有证据表明圆筒任务可能不适用于比较如此在系统发育上距离遥远的物种，关于这些结果的结论受到了削弱。在这里，我们研究了一种鱼类——孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）是否可以使用一种不同的范式来学习抑制行为，该范式利用了自发觅食行为，并克服了圆筒任务所具有的一些缺点。我们将孔雀鱼暴露于装在透明管内的活卤虫无节幼体（Artemia salina）面前。最初，孔雀鱼试图攻击猎物，但随着时间的推移，攻击次数迅速减少。对照测试似乎排除了这种行为趋势是由于对新奇事物的反应或习惯化的可能性，并表明孔雀鱼正在学习抑制觅食行为。记忆测试表明，孔雀鱼对觅食行为的抑制至少持续24小时。我们的研究似乎表明硬骨鱼会迅速且持久地抑制自发觅食行为；这可能与之前来自圆筒任务的证据有关，该证据支持了这一分类群中高效的行为抑制。
