The Cognitive Ecology of Animal Movement: Evidence From Birds and Mammals

Abstract

Cognition, defined as the processes concerned with the acquisition, retention and use of information, underlies animals’ abilities to navigate their local surroundings, embark on long-distance seasonal migrations, and socially learn information relevant to movement. Hence, in order to fully understand and predict animal movement, researchers must know the cognitive mechanisms that generate such movement. Work on a few model systems indicates that most animals possess excellent spatial learning and memory abilities, meaning that they can acquire and later recall information about distances and directions among relevant objects. Similarly, field work on several species has revealed some of the mechanisms that enable them to navigate over distances of up to several thousand kilometers. Key behaviors related to movement such as the choice of nest location, home range location and migration route are often affected by parents and other conspecifics. In some species, such social influence leads to the formation of aggregations, which in turn may lead to further social learning about food locations or other resources. Throughout the review, we note a variety of topics at the interface of cognition and movement that invite further investigation. These include the use of social information embedded in trails, the likely important roles of soundscapes and smellscapes, the mechanisms that large mammals rely on for long-distance migration, and the effects of expertise acquired over extended periods.

Biased Learning as a Simple Adaptive Foraging Mechanism

“…Competition may moreover have qualitative effects on the relationship between environmental heterogeneity and fitness (Trevail et al, 2019). At the same time, social information, gained by following or monitoring competitors, plays a major role in the cognitive movement ecology of many species (Kashetsky et al, 2021), and may have non-trivial interactions with the effects of cognitive biases. Lastly, the presence of other individuals with different cognitive strategies (e.g., different levels of optimism) could potentially play an important role in the evolution of an optimal cognitive strategy, and hence the formation of a cognitive niches, via either density-or frequency-dependent selection (Beecham, 2001).…”

Memories of Migrations Past: Sociality and Cognition in Dynamic, Seasonal Environments

“…Models have shown that collective knowledge is important, if not essential, to the evolution and process of migration (Guttal and Couzin, 2010;Shaw and Couzin, 2013;Berdahl et al, 2018). Many migratory organisms are social, and social learning is an acknowledged, non-genetic method for transmitting information (Kashetsky et al, 2021). Furthermore, the general role of social learning for improving a population's ability to track resources has been studied not just in animal systems, but in synthetic systems inspired by social behavior of animals such as optimization heuristics algorithms and the study of swarm robotics (Şahin, 2005;Brambilla et al, 2013).…”

Seeing Is Be-Leaving: Perception Informs Migratory Decisions in Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae)

“…However, behaviorally plastic migrants, particularly long-distance migrants, are likely making migratory decisions with less than complete knowledge of the habitat at their destination. Cognition, the processes concerned with the acquisition, retention, and use of information (Dukas, 1998(Dukas, , 2004Kashetsky et al, 2021), is the lens through which an individual comes to understand its physical environment. Therefore, migratory behavior arises from an individual's 'informational state'-knowledge of its current and alternative environments, rather than the attributes of the environment itself (Blumstein and Bouskila, 1996;Avgar et al, 2013;Merkle et al, 2019).…”

“…An individual's knowledge of its environment may result from previous experience, which when encoded in the brain and retained over time is called memory (Fagan et al, 2013;Kashetsky et al, 2021). Memory encompasses two forms of information: an individual's experience of its physical environment (attribute memory) and the spatial location associated with that experience (spatial memory) (Fagan et al, 2013).…”

“…While cognition likely underpins migratory behavior, particularly in behaviorally plastic migrants, cognitive drivers of migratory decision-making receive much less attention than other hypothesized mechanisms (Kashetsky et al, 2021). Our objective is to determine if cognitive processes -specifically attribute memory and perception -influence the decisions of large herbivores to undertake short-distance, altitudinal migrations.…”