Experimental investigation of an evolutionary hypothesis concerning adaptations in stickleback social learning.

There has been a long history of debate among researchers studying animal behaviour as to whether all animals learn in a broadly similar way or whether each species has evolved its own specialised way of learning. Often the best way to test whether an animal has evolved specializations is to make comparisons with closely related species of animals, that might be expected to have evolved the same or a different characteristic depending on the environmental conditions they experience. Recent laboratory experimental studies of two closely related species of fish (sticklebacks) by the investigators have revealed evidence for an adaptation in stickleback learning, suggesting that the ability to learn about the quality of resources from others has evolved in species vulnerable to predation to allow them to forage safely. We plan a series of experiments on sticklebacks, using fish drawn from multiple natural populations, to assess whether learning specializations have evolved in response to the hypothesized environmental conditions. The experiments are designed to test an evolutionary hypothesis about how specialized forms of learning evolve.The findings will be of great interest to researchers studying evolutionary biology, ecology and animal behaviour.