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Full-Text Articles in Biology
Cognition And The Brain Of Brood Parasitic Cowbirds., David F Sherry, Mélanie F Guigueno
Cognition And The Brain Of Brood Parasitic Cowbirds., David F Sherry, Mélanie F Guigueno
Psychology Publications
Cowbirds are brood parasites. Females lay their eggs in the nests of other species, which then incubate the cowbird eggs and raise the young cowbirds. Finding and returning to heterospecific nests presents cowbirds with several cognitive challenges. In some species, such as brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater), females but not males search for and remember the locations of potential host nests. We describe recent research on sex differences in cognition and the hippocampus associated with this sex difference in search for host nests. Female brown-headed cowbirds perform better than males on some, but not all, tests of spatial memory and females …
Contrasting Styles In Cognition And Behaviour In Bumblebees And Honeybees., David F Sherry, Caroline G Strang
Contrasting Styles In Cognition And Behaviour In Bumblebees And Honeybees., David F Sherry, Caroline G Strang
Psychology Publications
Bumblebees and honeybees have been the subjects of a great deal of recent research in animal cognition. Many of the major topics in cognition, including memory, attention, concept learning, numerosity, spatial cognition, timing, social learning, and metacognition have been examined in bumblebees, honeybees, or both. Although bumblebees and honeybees are very closely related, they also differ in important ways, including social organization, development, and foraging behaviour. We examine whether differences between bumblebees and honeybees in cognitive processes are related to differences in their natural history and behaviour. There are differences in some cognitive traits, such as serial reversal learning and …
Seasonal Hippocampal Plasticity In Food-Storing Birds., David F Sherry, Jennifer S Hoshooley
Seasonal Hippocampal Plasticity In Food-Storing Birds., David F Sherry, Jennifer S Hoshooley
Psychology Publications
Both food-storing behaviour and the hippocampus change annually in food-storing birds. Food storing increases substantially in autumn and winter in chickadees and tits, jays and nutcrackers and nuthatches. The total size of the chickadee hippocampus increases in autumn and winter as does the rate of hippocampal neurogenesis. The hippocampus is necessary for accurate cache retrieval in food-storing birds and is much larger in food-storing birds than in non-storing passerines. It therefore seems probable that seasonal change in caching and seasonal change in the hippocampus are causally related. The peak in recruitment of new neurons into the hippocampus occurs before birds …