Affiliation:
1. Department of Integrative Biology, The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA
2. Institute for Neuroscience, The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Abstract
When an individual ascends in dominance status within their social community, they often undergo a suite of behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular changes. 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. 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. We assayed steroid hormone (cortisol, testosterone) levels before and after the community experienced a social perturbation. 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. Additionally, using a principal component analysis we were able to identify specific cognitive and physiological attributes that appear to predispose certain individuals to ascend in social status once a perturbation occurs. These previously undiscovered relationships between social ascent and cognition further emphasize the broad influence of social dominance on animal decision-making.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.
Funder
Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
National Science Foundation
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Cited by
15 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献