Life Sciences Commons^™

Sex, Scents, And Cephalopods: Factors That Affect Social And Reproductive Behavior In Chambered Nautilus And Oval Squid, Naomi J. Lewandowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cephalopods are a highly specialized group of molluscs that show a wide range of behavioral patterns. Chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) and oval squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) are two very distinct species of cephalopod that both provide unique insight into cephalopod reproductive and social behavior. In experiments utilizing both species, I aimed to fill in knowledge gaps in a range of reproductive behaviors from fundamental responses to conspecifics, to preferred mating habitat.

In Chapter 1 and 2 I tested individual nautiluses in a Y-maze where recipients were exposed to paired odors of two donor nautiluses. I collected data …

A Comparison Of Individual Learning And Social Learning In Zebrafish Through An Ethorobotics Approach, Yanpeng Yang, Romain J. G. Clément, Stefano Ghirlanda, Maurizio Porfiri

Publications and Research

Social learning is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, where animals learn from group members about predators, foraging strategies, and so on. Despite its prevalence and adaptive benefits, our understanding of social learning is far from complete. Here, we study observational learning in zebrafish, a popular animal model in neuroscience. Toward fine control of experimental variables and high consistency across trials, we developed a novel robotics-based experimental test paradigm, in which a robotic replica demonstrated to live subjects the correct door to join a group of conspecifics. We performed two experimental conditions. In the individual training condition, subjects learned the correct …

Climatic Variables Are Strong Predictors Of Allonursing And Communal Nesting In Primates, Alexandra Louppova

Theses and Dissertations

Allomaternal care (AMC) is widespread throughout the primate order, previous studies have focused on benefits and costs to individuals. However, our understanding of environmental impacts on AMC behaviors in primates is still limited. Our study examines how ecology and environmental factors can predict certain AMC behaviors more than others.