Integrating ecology, psychology and neurobiology within a food-hoarding paradigm

Abstract

Many animals regularly hoard food for future use, which appears to be an important adaptation to a seasonally and/or unpredictably changing environment. This food-hoarding paradigm is an excellent example of a natural system that has broadly influenced both theoretical and empirical work in the field of biology. The food-hoarding paradigm has played a major role in the conceptual framework of numerous fields from ecology (e.g. plant -animal interactions) and evolution (e.g. the coevolution of caching, spatial memory and the hippocampus) to psychology (e.g. memory and cognition) and neurobiology (e.g. neurogenesis and the neurobiology of learning and memory). Many food-hoarding animals retrieve caches by using spatial memory. This memory-based behavioural system has the inherent advantage of being tractable for study in both the field and laboratory and has been shaped by natural selection, which produces variation with strong fitness consequences in a variety of taxa. Thus, food hoarding is an excellent model for a highly integrative approach to understanding numerous questions across a variety of disciplines. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the complexity of animal cognition such as future planning and episodic-like-memory as well as in the relationship between memory, the environment and the brain. In addition, new breakthroughs in neurobiology have enhanced our ability to address the mechanisms underlying these behaviours. Consequently, the field is necessarily becoming more integrative by assessing behavioural questions in the context of natural ecological systems and by addressing mechanisms through neurobiology and psychology, but, importantly, within an evolutionary and ecological framework. In this issue, we aim to bring together a series of papers providing a modern synthesis of ecology, psychology, physiology and neurobiology and identifying new directions and developments in the use of food-hoarding animals as a model system.

Is bigger always better? A critical appraisal of the use of volumetric analysis in the study of the hippocampus

“…By linking behaviour, physiology, morphology and neurobiology to ecology and evolution (the 'neuroecological' approach), recent work in the field has placed memory and memory use into an ecological and evolutionary framework (Pravosudov & Smulders 2010). The leading hypothesis for the evolution of memory used to retrieve caches is the adaptive specialization hypothesis (ASH), which states that selection can modify behaviour and its underlying neural mechanisms if such modifications enhance fitness (Krebs et al 1989;Sherry et al , 1992.…”

Untangling Elevation-Related Differences in the Hippocampus in Food-Caching Mountain Chickadees: The Effect of a Uniform Captive Environment

“…nonmanipulated by birds) food is limited and unpredictable [e.g. Pravosudov and Smulders, 2010]; (2) they rely, at least in part, on spatial memory to recover food caches, and it has been shown that food-caching species have a larger hippocampus (a brain region involved in spatial memory) compared to noncaching species [Krebs et al, 1989;Sherry et al, 1989;Pravosudov and Roth, 2013], and (3) they occur over a variety of environments, presenting a large variation in demands for food caches and hence for spatial memory [Pravosudov and Clayton, 2002;Roth et al, 2012].…”

The ODD protocol: A review and first update

“…2007, McNamara & Houston 2009, Dingemanse & al. 2010, Pravosudov & Smulders 2010. Models of these phenomena are unavoidably becoming more complex, often requiring the use of ABMs.…”