Social isolation in a group living fish impairs cognition

• Autor(a) principal: Brandão, Manuela Lombardi [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/122144
• topic: Ecologia animal; Peixe - Comportamento; Animais - Inteligencia; Isolamento social; Animal Proteção; Animal ecology

To adjust to changes in the environment, animals can learn about the changes to help them modulate their behaviour as needed. Sometimes, however, changes in the social or the physical environment can generate fear states that trigger a physiological stress response which modifies an individual’s capacity to learn and can have a negative impact on the welfare of the animal. Social isolation, for example, besides being sressful for social animals, may provide less stimulation for these individuals. Here, we investigated whether social isolation impairs learning skills in a cichlid fish, Cichlasoma paranaense. Two treatments were compared, one with isolated individuals and another with dominant fish from a social group. The ability to associate a visual landmark with an accessible food reward was measured in a spatial task. Overall, fewer isolated fish were able to learn the task. The result was not because of a difference in general motivation to swim, feed, or explore the foraging options. The results indicate that social isolation for a normally social species of fish can impair learning