Learning by Doing: The Use of Distance, Corners and Length in Rewarded Geometric Tasks by Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Zebrafish spontaneously use distance and directional relationships among three-dimensional extended surfaces to reorient within a rectangular arena. However, they fail to take advantage of either an array of freestanding corners or an array of unequal-length surfaces to search for a no-longer-presen...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Animals (Basel) 2021-07, Vol.11 (7), p.2001
Main Authors: Baratti, Greta, Rizzo, Angelo, Miletto Petrazzini, Maria Elena, Sovrano, Valeria Anna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Arrays
Cognitive ability
Cognitive models
Corners
Danio rerio
environmental geometry
Experiments
Fish
geometric components
Geometry
Learning
Materials handling
Memory
navigation
Navigation behavior
River beds
Spatial data
spatial learning
Vertebrates
Water temperature
Zebrafish
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Zebrafish spontaneously use distance and directional relationships among three-dimensional extended surfaces to reorient within a rectangular arena. However, they fail to take advantage of either an array of freestanding corners or an array of unequal-length surfaces to search for a no-longer-present goal under a spontaneous cued memory procedure, being unable to use the information supplied by corners and length without some kind of rewarded training. The present study aimed to tease apart the geometric components characterizing a rectangular enclosure under a procedure recruiting the reference memory, thus training zebrafish in fragmented layouts that provided differences in surface distance, corners, and length. Results showed that fish, besides the distance, easily learned to use both corners and length if subjected to a rewarded exit task over time, suggesting that they can represent all the geometrically informative parts of a rectangular arena when consistently exposed to them. Altogether, these findings highlight crucially important issues apropos the employment of different behavioral protocols (spontaneous choice versus training over time) to assess spatial abilities of zebrafish, further paving the way to deepen the role of visual and nonvisual encodings of isolated geometric components in relation to macrostructural boundaries.
ISSN:2076-2615
2076-2615
DOI:10.3390/ani11072001