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Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour

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A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Aquatic Animals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2022) | Viewed by 21554

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Maria Elena Miletto Petrazzini

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Guest Editor

School of Biological and Chemical Science, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
Interests: brain lateralization; animal behaviour; comparative cognition; fish

Prof. Vera Schluessel

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Guest Editor

Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The study of animal behaviour and cognition has traditionally focused on mammals and birds, whereas fish have been largely overlooked. This has partially been due to the common misconception that fish are more instinct-driven creatures that only display a series of simple actions in response to environmental stimuli. However, fish represent half of the vertebrate species on the planet and have adapted to living in almost every aquatic niche. Consequently, in order to cope with social and physical changing environments, fish—like all other animals—need to adjust their behaviour accordingly.
In recent years, there has been an upsurge in behavioural and cognitive studies showing that fish possess cognitive abilities and exhibit sophisticated behaviours that were previously believed to be uniquely present in mammals and birds. Despite it being quite clear that the evolutionary success of fish is largely due to their adaptive capabilities in behaviour and cognition, fish as a group still remain vastly underrepresented in regard to this type of research when compared to other vertebrates.
Original contributions from different research areas related to any aspect of fish cognition and behaviour are invited to this Special Issue, which aims to review current work and to suggest future directions in this field.

Dr. Maria Elena Miletto Petrazzini
Prof. Vera Schluessel
Guest Editors

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Keywords

fish
cognition
behaviour
laboratory studies
field studies
evolution
adaptation
brain

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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24 pages, 3859 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Visual Perception of Photographs of Rotated 3D Objects in Goldfish (Carassius auratus)

by Jessica J. Wegman, Evan Morrison, Kenneth Tyler Wilcox and Caroline M. DeLong

Animals 2022, 12(14), 1797; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12141797 - 13 Jul 2022

Viewed by 1870

Abstract

This study examined goldfishes’ ability to recognize photographs of rotated 3D objects. Six goldfish were presented with color photographs of a plastic model turtle and frog at 0° in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Fish were tested with stimuli at 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° rotated in the picture plane and two depth planes. All six fish performed significantly above chance at all orientations in the three rotation planes tested. There was no significant difference in performance as a function of aspect angle, which supported viewpoint independence. However, fish were significantly faster at 180° than at +/−90°, so there is also evidence for viewpoint-dependent representations. These fish subjects performed worse overall in the current study with 2D color photographs (M = 88.0%) than they did in our previous study with 3D versions of the same turtle and frog stimuli (M = 92.6%), although they performed significantly better than goldfish in our two past studies presented with black and white 2D stimuli (M = 67.6% and 69.0%). The fish may have relied on color as a salient cue. This study was a first attempt at examining picture-object recognition in fish. More work is needed to determine the conditions under which fish succeed at object constancy tasks, as well as whether they are capable of perceiving photographs as representations of real-world objects. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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18 pages, 4022 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Counting on Numbers—Numerical Abilities in Grey Bamboo Sharks and Ocellate River Stingrays

by Nils Kreuter, Nele Christofzik, Carolin Niederbremer, Janik Bollé and Vera Schluessel

Animals 2021, 11(9), 2634; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11092634 - 8 Sep 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2993

Abstract

Over the last decade, studies examining the cognitive abilities of fish have increased, using a broad range of approaches. One of the foci has been to test the ability of fish to discriminate quantities of items and to determine whether fish can solve tasks solely on the basis of numerical information. This study is the first to investigate this ability in two elasmobranch species. All animals were trained in two-alternative forced-choice visual experiments and then examined in transfer tests, to determine if previously gained knowledge could be applied to new tasks. Results show that the grey bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium griseum) and the ocellate river stingray (Potamotrygon motoro) can discriminate quantities based on numerical information alone, while continuous variables were controlled for. Furthermore, the data indicates that similar magnitudes and limits for quantity discrimination exist as in other animals. However, the high degree of intraspecific variation that was observed as well as the low rate of animals proving to be successful suggest that the ability to discriminate quantities may not be as important to these species as to some other vertebrate and invertebrate species tested so far. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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27 pages, 628 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Automated Operant Conditioning Devices for Fish. Do They Work?

by Elia Gatto, Maria Santacà, Ilaria Verza, Marco Dadda and Angelo Bisazza

Animals 2021, 11(5), 1397; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11051397 - 14 May 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3646

Abstract

The growing use of teleosts in comparative cognition and in neurobiological research has prompted many researchers to develop automated conditioning devices for fish. These techniques can make research less expensive and fully comparable with research on warm-blooded species, in which automated devices have been used for more than a century. Tested with a recently developed automated device, guppies (Poecilia reticulata) easily performed 80 reinforced trials per session, exceeding 80% accuracy in color or shape discrimination tasks after only 3–4 training session, though they exhibit unexpectedly poor performance in numerical discrimination tasks. As several pieces of evidence indicate, guppies possess excellent numerical abilities. In the first part of this study, we benchmarked the automated training device with a standard manual training procedure by administering the same set of tasks, which consisted of numerical discriminations of increasing difficulty. All manually-trained guppies quickly learned the easiest discriminations and a substantial percentage learned the more difficult ones, such as 4 vs. 5 items. No fish trained with the automated conditioning device reached the learning criterion for even the easiest discriminations. In the second part of the study, we introduced a series of modifications to the conditioning chamber and to the procedure in an attempt to improve its efficiency. Increasing the decision time, inter-trial interval, or visibility of the stimuli did not produce an appreciable improvement. Reducing the cognitive load of the task by training subjects first to use the device with shape and color discriminations, significantly improved their numerical performance. Allowing the subjects to reside in the test chamber, which likely reduced the amount of attentional resources subtracted to task execution, also led to an improvement, although in no case did subjects match the performance of fish trained with the standard procedure. Our results highlight limitations in the capacity of small laboratory teleosts to cope with operant conditioning automation that was not observed in laboratory mammals and birds and that currently prevent an easy and straightforward comparison with other vertebrates. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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Review

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17 pages, 1334 KiB

Open AccessReview

The Geometric World of Fishes: A Synthesis on Spatial Reorientation in Teleosts

by Greta Baratti, Davide Potrich, Sang Ah Lee, Anastasia Morandi-Raikova and Valeria Anna Sovrano

Animals 2022, 12(7), 881; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12070881 - 30 Mar 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2246

Abstract

Fishes navigate through underwater environments with remarkable spatial precision and memory. Freshwater and seawater species make use of several orientation strategies for adaptative behavior that is on par with terrestrial organisms, and research on cognitive mapping and landmark use in fish have shown that relational and associative spatial learning guide goal-directed navigation not only in terrestrial but also in aquatic habitats. In the past thirty years, researchers explored spatial cognition in fishes in relation to the use of environmental geometry, perhaps because of the scientific value to compare them with land-dwelling animals. Geometric navigation involves the encoding of macrostructural characteristics of space, which are based on the Euclidean concepts of “points”, “surfaces”, and “boundaries”. The current review aims to inspect the extant literature on navigation by geometry in fishes, emphasizing both the recruitment of visual/extra-visual strategies and the nature of the behavioral task on orientation performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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17 pages, 1273 KiB

Open AccessReview

The Sense of Number in Fish, with Particular Reference to Its Neurobiological Bases

by Andrea Messina, Davide Potrich, Ilaria Schiona, Valeria Anna Sovrano and Giorgio Vallortigara

Animals 2021, 11(11), 3072; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11113072 - 27 Oct 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3268

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that vertebrates can discriminate non-symbolic numerosity using an evolutionarily conserved system dubbed Approximate Number System (ANS). Two main approaches have been used to assess behaviourally numerosity in fish: spontaneous choice tests and operant training procedures. In the first, animals spontaneously choose between sets of biologically-relevant stimuli (e.g., conspecifics, food) differing in quantities (smaller or larger). In the second, animals are trained to associate a numerosity with a reward. Although the ability of fish to discriminate numerosity has been widely documented with these methods, the molecular bases of quantities estimation and ANS are largely unknown. Recently, we combined behavioral tasks with molecular biology assays (e.g c-fos and egr1 and other early genes expression) showing that the thalamus and the caudal region of dorso-central part of the telencephalon seem to be activated upon change in numerousness in visual stimuli. In contrast, the retina and the optic tectum mainly responded to changes in continuous magnitude such as stimulus size. We here provide a review and synthesis of these findings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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25 pages, 3272 KiB

Open AccessReview

Spatial Cognition in Teleost Fish: Strategies and Mechanisms

by Fernando Rodríguez, Blanca Quintero, Lucas Amores, David Madrid, Carmen Salas-Peña and Cosme Salas

Animals 2021, 11(8), 2271; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11082271 - 31 Jul 2021

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4183

Abstract

Teleost fish have been traditionally considered primitive vertebrates compared to mammals and birds in regard to brain complexity and behavioral functions. However, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that teleosts show advanced cognitive capabilities including spatial navigation skills that parallel those of land vertebrates. Teleost fish rely on a multiplicity of sensory cues and can use a variety of spatial strategies for navigation, ranging from relatively simple body-centered orientation responses to allocentric or “external world-centered” navigation, likely based on map-like relational memory representations of the environment. These distinct spatial strategies are based on separate brain mechanisms. For example, a crucial brain center for egocentric orientation in teleost fish is the optic tectum, which can be considered an essential hub in a wider brain network responsible for the generation of egocentrically referenced actions in space. In contrast, other brain centers, such as the dorsolateral telencephalic pallium of teleost fish, considered homologue to the hippocampal pallium of land vertebrates, seem to be crucial for allocentric navigation based on map-like spatial memory. Such hypothetical relational memory representations endow fish’s spatial behavior with considerable navigational flexibility, allowing them, for example, to perform shortcuts and detours. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current Progress in Fish Cognition and Behaviour)

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