Memory in wild mountain chickadees from different elevations: comparing first-year birds with older survivors

Tello-Ramos, Maria Cristina; Branch, Carrie L.; Pitera, Angela M.; Kozlovsky, Dovid Y.; Bridge, Eli S.; Pravosudov, Vladimir V.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.12.019

Cited by 53 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…We developed and implemented a radio frequency identification (RFID)-based system to test spatial cognition in wild, passive integrated transponder (PIT)-tagged chickadees [21][22][23]. RFIDenabled feeders can be programmed to provide food only to specific individuals while recording the PIT-tag ID and time of each visit by all tagged birds.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When a bird visits a rewarding feeder, a door opens allowing access to food, while any other feeder would record the ID and time of visit without providing food. We followed the same testing protocol for the last two years [23], which allowed direct comparisons of (a) cognitive performance between individuals in the same cohort of first-year birds who survived their first winter and those that did not and (b) cognitive performance between age classesadults versus first-year birds.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These comparisons were conceived to reveal the presence of selection on two spatial cognition metrics-spatial learning and memory ability and reversal spatial learning and memory ability (when each bird was re-assigned to a new and different rewarding feeder immediately following the spatial learning task) [22,23]. Spatial learning and memory ability are expected to reflect the ability to remember and recover previously made food caches [2,8], while reversal learning ability is expected to reflect learning and memory flexibility, which may be important for foraging success in unpredictable environments [23,25]. We used mean number of location errors per trial over the first 20 trials (initial learning and memory phase) and the mean number of location errors per trial over the entire 4-day task (overall task performance measuring learning and longer-term memory) [21][22][23].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natural Selection and Spatial Cognition in Wild Food-Caching Mountain Chickadees

et al. 2019

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natural Selection and Spatial Cognition in Wild Food-Caching Mountain Chickadees

et al. 2019

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“…Learning and memory performance vary widely in different contexts across the animal kingdom, with some species having evolved higher learning and/or memory abilities depending on the selective pressures they have been exposed to [1][2][3][4][5] . Behavioral experiments in butterflies 6,7 , chickadees 8,9 , moths 10,11 , honey bees [12][13][14] , fruit flies 15,16 , rodents [17][18][19] , and humans 20 have shown collectively that there is genetically based variation in these traits and have established the different types of learning and memory within species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple genetic loci affect place learning and memory performance in Drosophila melanogaster

Williams-Simon

Posey

Mitchell

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Learning and memory are critical functions for all animals, giving individuals the ability to respond to changes in their environment. Within populations, individuals vary, however the mechanisms underlying this variation in performance are largely unknown. Thus, it remains to be determined what genetic factors cause an individual to have high learning ability and what factors determine how well an individual will remember what they have learned. To genetically dissect learning and memory performance, we used the Drosophila synthetic population resource (DSPR), a multiparent mapping resource in the model system Drosophila melanogaster, consisting of a large set of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) that naturally vary in these and other traits. Fruit flies can be trained in a “heat box” to learn to remain on one side of a chamber (place learning) and can remember this (place memory) over short timescales. Using this paradigm, we measured place learning and memory for ~49 000 individual flies from over 700 DSPR RILs. We identified 16 different loci across the genome that significantly affect place learning and/or memory performance, with 5 of these loci affecting both traits. To identify transcriptomic differences associated with performance, we performed RNA‐Seq on pooled samples of seven high performing and seven low performing RILs for both learning and memory and identified hundreds of genes with differences in expression in the two sets. Integrating our transcriptomic results with the mapping results allowed us to identify nine promising candidate genes, advancing our understanding of the genetic basis underlying natural variation in learning and memory performance.

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“…Learning and memory performance vary widely in different contexts across the animal kingdom, with some species having evolved higher learning and/or memory abilities depending on the selective pressures they have been exposed. [1][2][3][4][5] Behavioral experiments in butterflies, 6,7 chickadees, 8,9 moths, 10,11 *Deceased December 27, 2018 honey bees, [12][13][14] fruit flies, 15,16 rodents [17][18][19] and humans 20 have shown collectively that there is genetically based variation in these traits and have established the different types of learning and memory within species. This variation provides the raw material for natural selection to act on when higher or lower learning and memory performance is selected for in a population.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple genetic loci affect place learning and memory performance in Drosophila melanogaster

Williams-Simon

Posey

Mitchell

et al. 2019

Genes Brain and Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Learning and memory are critical functions for all animals, giving individuals the ability to respond to changes in their environment. Within populations, individuals vary, however the mechanisms underlying this variation in performance are largely unknown. Thus, it remains to be determined what genetic factors cause an individual to have high learning ability and what factors determine how well an individual will remember what they have learned. To genetically dissect learning and memory performance, we used the Drosophila synthetic population resource (DSPR), a multiparent mapping resource in the model system Drosophila melanogaster, consisting of a large set of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) that naturally vary in these and othertraits. Fruit flies can be trained in a "heat box" to learn to remain on one side of a chamber (place learning) and can remember this (place memory) over short timescales. Using this paradigm, we measured place learning and memory for~49 000 individual flies from over 700 DSPR RILs. We identified 16 different loci across the genome that significantly affect place learning and/or memory performance, with 5 of these loci affecting both traits. To identify transcriptomic differences associated with performance, we performed RNA-Seq on pooled samples of seven high performing and seven low performing RILs for both learning and memory and identified hundreds of genes with differences in expression in the two sets. Integrating our transcriptomic results with the mapping results allowed us to identify nine promising candidate genes, advancing our understanding of the genetic basis underlying natural variation in learning and memory performance.K E Y W O R D S differential gene expression, Drosophila melanogaster, learning, memory, multiparental population, QTL

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Memory in wild mountain chickadees from different elevations: comparing first-year birds with older survivors

Cited by 53 publications

References 23 publications

Natural Selection and Spatial Cognition in Wild Food-Caching Mountain Chickadees

Natural Selection and Spatial Cognition in Wild Food-Caching Mountain Chickadees

Multiple genetic loci affect place learning and memory performance in Drosophila melanogaster

Multiple genetic loci affect place learning and memory performance in Drosophila melanogaster

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