The genetic basis of spatial cognitive variation in a food-caching bird

• Published in: Current biology Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 210 - 219.e4
• Main Authors: Branch, Carrie L., Semenov, Georgy A., Wagner, Dominique N., Sonnenberg, Benjamin R., Pitera, Angela M., Bridge, Eli S., Taylor, Scott A., Pravosudov, Vladimir V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Inc 10.01.2022
• Subjects: Animals; Cognition; Feeding Behavior; Food; food-caching; genetic-basis; genome-wide; Hippocampus - physiology; natural selection; Songbirds - genetics; spatial cognition; spatial cognition; genome-wide; natural selection; food-caching; genetic-basis

Spatial cognition is used by most organisms to navigate their environment. Some species rely particularly heavily on specialized spatial cognition to survive, suggesting that a heritable component of cognition may be under natural selection. This idea remains largely untested outside of humans, perh...