Variability in ambient temperature promotes juvenile participation and shorter latency in a learning test in zebra finches

Recent increase in climate instability and unpredictability can pose challenges to the behaviour and survival of animals. Effective cognitive mechanisms could provide adequate responses for individuals to adapt to changing habitats and should be selected for. Studying the direct impact of the unpredictably changing environment on learning performance is particularly important in juvenile animals, because their learning abilities are in development and any impairment can affect their fitness. In this study, we bred zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, in stable or variable ambient temperature conditions. At hatching, half of the birds in each family were cross-fostered to a different condition while the other half remained in their original one. Just prior to their independence, we assessed their associative learning performance of 209 juveniles. Using a novel colour associative test apparatus, we compared the participation rate, latency to choice and learning performance between the experimental groups. We found that the juveniles that originated from the stable condition and that experienced environmental instability after hatching had the highest participation rate and the shortest latency to choice. Our results also showed that individuals that made quicker choices performed significantly better in the learning test than the slower birds. This finding was opposite to the often-postulated speed-accuracy trade-off, usually manifested by more accurate learning of slower individuals. There was no direct effect of temperature variability on the learning performance. However, we suggest that the differences in activity and latency (measures often used as proxies of personality traits) could be attributed to personality bias which may indirectly affect the outcome and interpretation of cognitive research. We discuss our results in relation to the long-term effects of environmental variability on animal activeness and cognitive abilities as well as the mechanisms responsible for the variation in learning performance. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/).

Automated summary

As climate instability increases, animals face challenges in adaptation, particularly affecting the learning abilities of juvenile animals. Research found that juveniles hatched in stable conditions but experiencing environmental instability showed higher learning participation rates and shorter latency to choice.