Incubation environment impacts the social cognition of adult lizards.

ABSTRACT: Recent work exploring the relationship between early environmental conditions and cognition has shown that incubation environment can influence both brain anatomy and performance in simple operant tasks in young lizards. It is currently unknown how it impacts other, potentially more sophisticated, cognitive processes. Social-cognitive abilities, such as gaze following and social learning, are thought to be highly adaptive as they provide a short-cut to acquiring new information. Here, we investigated whether egg incubation temperature influenced two aspects of social cognition, gaze following and social learning in adult reptiles (Pogona vitticeps). Incubation temperature did not influence the gaze following ability of the bearded dragons; however, lizards incubated at colder temperatures

SUBMITTER: Siviter H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5717640 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature