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We found that ascending males changed their physiology and novel object recognition preference during the perturbation, and they subsequently differed in social competence from non-ascenders.
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We assayed steroid hormone (cortisol, testosterone) levels before and after the community experienced a social perturbation. Here, we assessed male Astatotilapia burtoni, an African cichlid fish known for its dynamic social dominance hierarchies, in a set of cognitive tasks both before and after a community perturbation in which some individuals ascended in dominance status. While these changes have been extensively characterized across a number of species, we know much less about the degree to which these changes in turn influence cognitive processes like associative learning, memory and spatial navigation. When an individual ascends in dominance status within their social community, they often undergo a suite of behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular changes. These findings contradict those from laboratory studies and suggest that it is critical to investigate the biological consequences of social dominance under natural conditions. Spatial cognitive flexibility, on the other hand, appears to be more sensitive to environmental influences, including social dominance. Our results suggest that spatial learning and memory ability in specialized food-caching species is a stable trait resilient to social influences.
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By contrast, there were no consistent differences in spatial learning and memory ability associated with dominance rank. Higher dominance rank was associated with higher spatial cognitive flexibility in harsh environments at higher elevations, but not at lower, milder elevations. Here, we tested whether social dominance rank is associated with differences in spatial learning and memory, and in reversal spatial learning (flexibility) abilities in wild food-caching mountain chickadees at different montane elevations. One such adverse effect concerns impaired cognitive ability, often thought to be associated with social subordination. These environments may produce unnaturally high antagonistic interactions, exaggerating the stress of social subordination and any associated adverse consequences. However, many studies using such comparisons have been performed in captive environments. Social dominance has long been used as a model to investigate social stress. Whether the social environment causes differences in learning performance or instead, inherent differences in learning ability predetermine rank remains to be tested. Our results provide important information about how variation in cognitive performance relates to an individual's social rank within a group. Motivation to participate in the task was not related to social rank or task performance, thus indicating that these rank-related differences are not a consequence of differences in motivation to complete the task.
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#Peter sage tasklog trial
Task performance improved with increasing trial number and was positively related to social rank, with higher ranking males showing greater levels of success. We assayed individual learning performance of these males on a binary spatial discrimination task to investigate whether inter-individual variation in performance is associated with group social rank. We used a novel statistical method: randomized Elo-ratings, to infer the social hierarchy of 18 male pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, while in a captive, mixed-sex group with a linear hierarchy. Previous studies often only consider dyadic relationships, rather than the more ecologically relevant social hierarchies or networks, hence failing to account for how dyadic relationships may be adjusted within larger social groups. Dominant individuals differ from subordinates in their performances on cognitive tasks across a suite of taxa.
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