The relationship between social rank and spatial learning in pheasants, Phasianus colchicus: cause or consequence?

ABSTRACT: Individual differences in performances on cognitive tasks have been found to differ according to social rank across multiple species. However, it is not clear whether an individual's cognitive performance is flexible and the result of their current social rank, modulated by social interactions (social state dependent hypothesis), or if it is determined prior to the formation of the social hierarchy and indeed influences an individual's rank (prior attributes hypothesis). We separated these two hypotheses by measuring learning performance of male pheasants, Phasianus colchicus, on a spatial discrimination task as chicks and again as adults. We inferred adult male social rank from observing agonistic interactions while housed in captive multi-male multi-female groups. Learning perform

SUBMITTER: Langley EJG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6238775 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature