Maternal effects impact decision-making in a viviparous lizard.

ABSTRACT: Stressful conditions experienced during early development can have deleterious effects on offspring morphology, physiology and behaviour. However, few studies have examined how developmental stress influences an individual's cognitive phenotype. Using a viviparous lizard, we show that the availability of food resources to a mother during gestation influences a key component of her offspring's cognitive phenotype: their decision-making. Offspring from females who experienced low resource availability during gestation did better in an anti-predatory task that relied on spatial associations to guide their decisions, whereas offspring from females who experienced high resource availability during gestation did better in a foraging task that relied on colour associations to inform their decisio

SUBMITTER: Munch KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5938558 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature