Trapp Rebecca M, Bell Alison M
School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA.
Ethology. 2017 Mar;123(3):213-220. doi: 10.1111/eth.12590. Epub 2017 Feb 3.
Social learning is an important process in the spread of information, especially in changing environments where inherited behaviors may not remain relevant. In many species, the decision of whom to trust to have reliable information depends on the relationship between individuals. Many fish species, including three-spined sticklebacks, preferentially associate with familiar individuals. Previous studies in three-spined sticklebacks have provided mixed evidence about the effect of familiarity on social learning in this species. Therefore, this study further explores familiarity and social learning in sticklebacks, specifically from a demonstrator-focused perspective. We found that in a food patch discrimination task, individuals with unfamiliar demonstrators performed significantly better than those with familiar demonstrators. In a problem-solving task, we found that focal fish attended to the behavior of demonstrators, but we did not detect an effect of familiarity on performance, and indeed the proportion of individuals to solve the task after observing demonstrators was low. These results suggest that sticklebacks have a preference for unfamiliar demonstrators, but that the use of social information varies depending on context.
社会学习是信息传播中的一个重要过程，尤其是在不断变化的环境中，在这种环境下，遗传行为可能不再适用。在许多物种中，决定信任谁以获取可靠信息取决于个体之间的关系。许多鱼类，包括三刺鱼，更喜欢与熟悉的个体交往。先前对三刺鱼的研究关于熟悉度对该物种社会学习的影响提供了混杂的证据。因此，本研究进一步从以示范者为重点的角度探索三刺鱼中的熟悉度和社会学习。我们发现，在食物斑块辨别任务中，与不熟悉示范者的个体相比，与熟悉示范者的个体表现明显更好。在一个解决问题的任务中，我们发现受试鱼会关注示范者的行为，但我们没有检测到熟悉度对表现的影响，实际上，观察示范者后解决任务的个体比例很低。这些结果表明，三刺鱼对不熟悉的示范者有偏好，但社会信息的使用会因情境而异。
