Ecology and Cognition Part I-II

• Cognition is the process of acquiring, processing, storing, and using information which allows individuals to process information, make decisions, learn, establish memories and have perception
• Task demands within a paradigm can limit or inhibit observed behaviors in cognitive studies.
• Evolution is not directional – organisms do not evolve towards some theoretical ideal of behaviour
• Constraints are important (evolution can only work with what it has available).
• Evolution shapes behavior through learned decision rules, known as strategies
• Strategies are influenced by costs, benefits, and environmental circumstances
• Over time, starlings have learned to adjust their foraging behavior based on these factors to achieve the best possible outcome, demonstrating the concept of optimality in evolution.
• Visser & Lessells (2001) showed that raising more chicks, incubating more eggs, and laying more eggs had costs such as reduced survival rates and delayed breeding in following years, demonstrating the concept of sub-optimality
• Seemingly sub-optimal behavior of laying fewer eggs is actually an optimal strategy considering the long-term costs and benefits.
• Evolution tends to favor strategies that lead to optimal behavior, various factors, including ecological and cognitive constraints, can lead to behaviors that might appear suboptimal when viewed in isolation or without the full context
• Internal costs of supporting complex cognitive mechanisms can constrain the evolution towards optimality
• Having fewer neural connections for sensory output is an example of?


  Cognitive constrains on optimality
• Element of life that shape the evolution of behavior

  • Cognitive constrains (lack of neural connections)
  • Optimality behavioral strategies
  • Sub-optimality behavioral strategies
  • Ecological niche challenges (navigation patterns)
  • Individual cognitive differences such as intelligence/ social intelligence
• An example of a Ecological challenge strategised by the cognitive mechanisms of navigation
• Species apply cognitive mechanistic strategies to help overcome ecological challenges which in turn develop into evolutionary behaviours
• Intelligence can be domain-specific (like navigation) or domain-general (like behavioral flexibility
• Ecological validity it refers to the accuracy of how aspects of cognition and behaviour within animals are studied in conditions that mirror their natural environments.
• Individual differences are a measure of how individual exhibit variations in behaviours, which allows us to  question what their cognitive motives are etc.
• List the different ways we can measure animals behaviour and cognition to establish similarities and differences between animals and humans?

  Ecological validity and individual differences
• What can alter the results in measuring animals behaviour and cognition?

  Experimenter effects leads us to draw false conclusions, and paradigm and training effects
• Task demands relates to specific features may limiting or inhibiting observed behaviours in cognitive studies as they are not shaped to specific cognitive abilities of primates
• Optimality is tied to the evolutionary "sweet-spot" of behavior or trait selection. It maximises a species' situational benefits and minimises their costs, aiding an organism's success in its environment.
• Sub-optimality is predictive of future outcomes as costs could include energy expenditure or reduced chances of reproduction, while benefits could relate to survival, reproduction, or resource acquisition.
• Considering costs and benefits over the organism's lifetime, these behaviors or traits may turn out to be optimal, this can be defined as?

  Sub-optimality
• Sub-optimality in evolution refers to the situation where an organism's behavior or trait appears to be less efficient or effective than possible alternatives
• Navigation within species has a vast array of cognitive strategies to aid species in deciphering distances between geographical ecological locations
• Central place foraging for ant navigation involves using memory of landmarks, pheromone trails, learned route following, path integration (vetor of distance travelled), cognitive mapping to efficiently locate food resources and return directly to a central place, such as a nest or home base.
• Honey bees navigate to foraging sites using instructions from the waggle dance, but there's weak evidence for cognitive mapping, However, Egyptian fruit bats demonstrate robust cognitive mapping abilities
• Features of social structures (societies) influence selection for specific intelligence in species, this relates to?

  Social intelligence hypothesis
• Features of physical environment influence selection for specific intelligence in species, this relates to?

  The ecological intelligence hypothesis
• Imagine a pigeon in a bustling unpredictable city environment, acting like a cognitive GPS, remembering precise locations of food sources, and navigating through high-rise buildings and moving vehicles, what type of intelligence is this pigeon applying?

  Ecological intelligence
• Picture a dolphin in a pod as a charismatic leader who uses its problem-solving abilities and social skills to maintain harmony and cooperation in its group, just like a good team leader in a workplace, what type of intelligence is this dolphin applying?

  Social intelligence
• Think of a beaver that's like an expert engineer, capable of building impressive dams but might struggle if asked to, say, prepare a five-course meal; this is domain?

  Domain specific intelligence
• Imagine a crow as a jack-of-all-trades, applying its learning abilities to solve various generalised problems, from figuring out how to use a stick to reach food, to remembering the face of a person who disturbed it; this is domain?

  Domain general intelligence
• Fitness Consequences of Intelligence: Consider a clever octopus, which uses its problem-solving skills to escape from predators and find food, increasing its chances of survival and, thereby, winning the underwater survival lottery