Article
Behavioral Sciences
J. E. C. Adriaense, V. Slipogor, S. Hintze, L. Marshall, C. Lamm, T. Bugnyar
Summary: The study investigated emotional contagion in common marmosets, using a judgement bias test. Results showed successful emotional manipulation of demonstrators, with observers displaying increased scratching and arousal after positive manipulation. However, the predicted response bias in subjects under positive or negative states was not supported in the judgement bias test.
Article
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Elizabeth S. Paul, William Browne, Michael T. Mendl, Gina Caplen, Suzanne Held, Anna Trevarthen, Christine J. Nicol
Summary: Most studies focus on comparing animals living in enriched environments with those living in non-enriched ones, but few have investigated the trajectory of change in the animals' living conditions. In this study, laying hens were observed to determine the effects of worsening or improving living conditions on their affective states and welfare. The results showed that the trajectory of change in living conditions had some impact on the hens' behavior, but did not definitively affect their affective states and welfare.
APPLIED ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Marko Bracic, Lena Bohn, Viktoria Siewert, Vanessa T. von Kortzfleisch, Holger Schielzeth, Sylvia Kaiser, Norbert Sachser, S. Helene Richter
Summary: Individuals differ in the way they judge ambiguous information, with some individuals being more optimistic and others more pessimistic. Optimistic and pessimistic judgment biases have been used as indicators of animals' emotional states in animal welfare science. This study explored the role of genetic and environmental factors in modulating judgment biases in mice and found that they did not have a significant influence on these biases. However, anxiety-like behavior was influenced by genotypes and environments. Additionally, the study showed that individual differences in judgment biases were stable over time. Further research is needed to investigate the impact of other factors on judgment biases and to understand their ecological and evolutionary relevance.
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Veterinary Sciences
Laura Clare Garnham, Charlie Clarke, Hanne Lovlie
Summary: Individual differences in inhibitory control could be linked to affective states, which could have implications for welfare. Less fearful and more optimistic individuals may have poorer inhibitory control, which could be associated with less negative and more positive affective states. However, the relationship between inhibitory control and affective states may vary depending on age and sex.
FRONTIERS IN VETERINARY SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Elizabeth S. Paul, William Browne, Michael T. Mendl, Gina Caplen, Anna Trevarthen, Suzanne Held, Christine J. Nicol
Summary: This study used a triangulation approach to assess the welfare of captive animals, finding that some indicators were consistent across different time scales but did not converge to identify a precise state of animal welfare.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Clara Wilson, Nathan Hall, Edgar O. Aviles-Rosa, Kerry Campbell, Gareth Arnott, Catherine Reeve
Summary: This study examines the impact of learning on a judgement bias paradigm, finding a significant relationship between the number of sessions and dogs' performance, indicating that dogs' responses to ambiguous locations are influenced by learning.
Review
Veterinary Sciences
Thomas Ede, Thomas D. Parsons
Summary: Cognitive approaches are increasingly popular in assessing pig welfare, but the effectiveness of specific cognitive tasks in measuring welfare is limited. This study highlights the need for further validation and innovation in the use of cognitive tasks for pig welfare assessment.
FRONTIERS IN VETERINARY SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Louise Hedlund, Tiphaine Palazon, Per Jensen
Summary: Billions of laying hen chicks are incubated, hatched, and processed in industrial hatcheries every year worldwide. Commercially hatched chicks did not show elevated levels of feather corticosterone, but exhibited more pessimistic behavior when approaching ambiguous cues.
Article
Veterinary Sciences
Sara Hintze, Lisa Schanz
Summary: Research investigated whether horses' eye wrinkle expression could serve as an indicator of mood, finding that there was no significant correlation between eye wrinkles and horses' decisions in a cognitive judgment bias task, but as the optimism index increased, horses tended to appear less worried.
FRONTIERS IN VETERINARY SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Biology
Ximena J. Nelson, Alex H. Taylor, Erica A. Cartmill, Heidi Lyn, Lauren M. Robinson, Vincent Janik, Colin Allen
Summary: The nature and evolution of positive emotion is a major question that remains unanswered in science and philosophy. While negative emotions have received more attention, studying positive emotions is challenging due to the lack of identifiable behaviors. However, intense positive emotions are more likely to have visible markers and can be studied scientifically. Identifying positive affect is important for animal welfare and can provide insights into the evolution of consciousness and other positive emotions.
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
(2023)
Article
Veterinary Sciences
Johanna Stenfelt, Jenny Yngvesson, Harry J. Blokhuis, Maria Vilain Rorvang
Summary: This study aimed to investigate if dairy cows possess cognitive abilities to acquire new behavior through social learning in a spatial detour task. The results indicate that cows did not utilize social learning mechanisms when solving the detour task, with no significant differences between observers and controls in success and latency.
FRONTIERS IN VETERINARY SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Benjamin J. Ashton, Alex Thornton, Maxime Cauchoix, Amanda R. Ridley
Summary: Quantifying the long-term repeatability of cognitive performance, this study finds that certain cognitive phenotypes in wild Australian magpies are stable, providing important implications for understanding cognitive evolution.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Carlotta Burani, Annalisa Pelosi, Paola Valsecchi
Summary: The judgement bias test is a commonly used tool to evaluate animals' optimistic/pessimistic attitude and infer their emotional and welfare state. However, there have been some issues with applying this test to dogs, so a novel paradigm was proposed to improve the reliability and stability of the results.
Article
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Zuzana Skalna, Katarina Pichova, Lubor Kostal
Summary: Human-animal interactions in the livestock industry can have a significant impact on the welfare and productivity of animals. This study aimed to test if tactile stimulation, similar to tickling, would induce changes in the affective states of laying hens. The study found that the specific form of tactile stimulation administered did not appear to be perceived as positive by the hens. The behavioral assay used in the study may not have been sensitive enough to detect any effects, or other factors such as different interactions or timing of the treatment may have a greater impact.
APPLIED ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
M. G. Anderson, A. M. Campbell, A. Crump, G. Arnott, L. Jacobs
Summary: Affective state can influence an animal's judgement, with animals in positive states showing more optimistic interpretations of ambiguous cues. This study found that broiler chickens in high-complexity environments displayed a more optimistic judgement bias, indicating that environmental complexity can improve their affective states. Additionally, birds in higher stocking density pens tended to approach all cues faster, possibly due to increased food motivation from resource competition.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Allison M. Roth, Niels J. Dingemanse, Shinichi Nakagawa, Grant C. McDonald, Hanne Lovlie, Diana A. Robledo-Ruiz, Tommaso Pizzari
Summary: This study investigated the role of individual personalities in sexual selection, specifically exploring and boldness, in male red junglefowl. The results showed that faster exploring males had better mating success, while boldness did not predict mating performance. In female-biased groups, both the fastest and slowest exploring males had higher mating success, indicating that sexual selection on personality is complex and contingent on the social environment.
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Paula H. Marjamaki, Hannah L. Dugdale, Richard Delahay, Robbie A. McDonald, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: This study found that genetic and environmental factors contribute to variations in M. bovis infection status among European badgers. While genetic factors do play a role, environmental influences, such as social group membership and maternal effects, are more important in determining infection status. This suggests that social and early-life environments are key drivers of disease traits in wild animal hosts.
JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Anna Favati, Hanne Lovlie, Olof Leimar
Summary: The study found that social experience positively influences contest success in male domestic fowl, but aggression and morphological traits also play an important role.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Jelle Boonekamp, Rolando Rodriguez-Munoz, Paul Hopwood, Erica Zuidersma, Ellis Mulder, Alastair Wilson, Simon Verhulst, Tom Tregenza
Summary: Telomeres were found at chromosome-ends of the model insect Gryllus campestris, with lengths much longer than human infants' telomeres. Neither temperature treatment nor age affected telomere length, although high heritability of telomere length was observed. Further investigation is needed to explore the relationship between telomere length maintenance and fitness during rapid growth phases.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Sara Ryding, Laura C. Garnham, Robin N. Abbey-Lee, Irina Petkova, Anastasia Kreshchenko, Hanne Lovlie
Summary: This study investigates the impact of environmental and neurobiological factors on impulsive behavior in red junglefowl. The results suggest that both environment and neurobiological pathways can explain individual variation and reduction in impulsivity, with different neural pathways governing impulsive action and persistence, supporting the notion that impulsivity is a heterogeneous behavior.
Article
Biology
Rienk W. Fokkema, Peter Korsten, Tim Schmoll, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: While environmental factors can cause phenotypic trait variation through phenotypic plasticity, individuals can also influence their environments and competitively acquire better patches, leading to phenotype-environment correlations. This social competition may result in winners gaining more resources and better phenotypes at the expense of losers, impacting genetic and life-history traits. Failure to recognize competition-induced phenotype-environment correlations could lead to overestimation of populations' adaptive potential.
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pablo Capilla-Lasheras, Xavier Harrison, Emma M. Wood, Alastair J. Wilson, Andrew J. Young
Summary: Research shows that in wild cooperative birds, altruism can reduce environmentally induced reproductive variance.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Laura Clare Garnham, Robert Boddington, Hanne Lovlie
Summary: Individual variation in cognitive aspects such as inhibitory control is not well understood, and how selection acts on this variation remains unclear. This study explores the temporal consistency and inter-relatedness of impulsive action and persistence influenced by inhibitory control, and their links to social rank, foraging efficiency, and risk taking in red junglefowl. The findings suggest that selection could act on inhibitory control through these behaviors, but there is no evidence of a link between inhibitory control and social rank, foraging efficiency, or risk taking.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Pamela M. Prentice, Chloe Mnatzaganian, Thomas M. Houslay, Alex Thornton, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: Cognition is crucial for survival and reproduction, and it varies between species and individuals. This study on male Poecilia reticulata found differences in spatial learning ability and stress response behavior among individuals. However, the cumulative effects of experience and chronic stress may impact cognitive performance.
Article
Ecology
Samantha C. Patrick, Denis Reale, Jonathan R. Potts, Alastair J. Wilson, Claire Doutrelant, Celine Teplitsky, Anne Charmantier
Summary: There are variations in life-history strategies regarding the investment in current versus future reproduction. This study focuses on the temporality in reproductive investment hypothesis and explores the variations in the time frame over which reproductive costs are paid. The findings suggest that individuals differ in when they pay the cost of reproduction, and failure to consider these differences across different temporal scales and environments may underestimate reproductive trade-offs.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Suo Qiu, Lengxob Yong, Alastair Wilson, Darren P. Croft, Chay Graham, Deborah Charlesworth
Summary: Research found that the guppy Y chromosome occasionally recombines with the X chromosome and showed recent demographic changes. Sequence variants are associated with the sex-determining locus, but any completely sex-linked region may be very small.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Patrick Sharman, Andrew J. Young, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: This study aimed to investigate the effects of parental age on offspring speed in thoroughbred racehorses. The results showed significant effects of both maternal and paternal age on offspring speed, indicating that both parents' ages play a role in determining the speed of their offspring. While maternal age effects were stronger, the existence and magnitude of paternal effects are particularly noteworthy considering the lack of paternal involvement in parental care in thoroughbred sires.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2022)
Review
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Elin M. Weber, Josefina Zidar, Birgit Ewaldsson, Kaisa Askevik, Eva Uden, Emma Svensk, Elin Tornqvist
Summary: A systematic literature review on the causes of aggression among group-housed male mice revealed significant variations in study methods and designs, leading to inconsistent results. Nonetheless, the study suggested that studying home cage aggression in home cage environments, rather than introducing unfamiliar mice in a novel environment, is more suitable. Additionally, addressing aggression requires customized solutions as it is a complex problem.
Article
Ecology
Pamela M. Prentice, Alex Thornton, Niclas Kolm, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: Individual variation in cognitive traits is necessary for natural selection and may result from complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors.
JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Patrick Sharman, Andrew J. Young, Alastair J. Wilson
Summary: The study found significant effects of maternal and paternal age on the speed of thoroughbred racehorses' offspring, with maternal effects being more negative. These results could help optimize breeding decisions and contribute to the evidence that both maternal and paternal age affect offspring traits.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2022)
