Cognitive flexibility in a Tanganyikan bower-building cichlid, Aulonocranus dewindti.

ABSTRACT: Cognitive flexibility, the ability to modify one's decision rules to adapt to a new situation, has been extensively studied in many species. In fish, though, data on cognitive flexibility are scarce, especially in the wild. We studied a lekking species of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika, Aulonocranus dewindti. Males create sand bowers as spawning sites and maintain them by removing any objects falling into it. In the first part of our experiment, we investigated the existence of spontaneous decision rules for the maintenance of the bowers. We showed that if a snail shell and a stone are placed in their bower, fish prefer to remove the shell first. In the second phase of our experiment, we took advantage of this spontaneous decision rule to investigate whether this rule was flexible. We tes

SUBMITTER: Tomasek M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10770232 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature