The Cognition of Nest Building

For all that bird nests have attracted centuries of interest, we know almost nothing about why birds build the nests they do. Here we propose to answer these questions and by so doing provide insight into the evolution of cognition. The prime objectives of the work proposed here are to determine the role that cognition plays in nest building and where in the brain control of nest building occurs. The discovery of tool manufacture and use by New Caledonian crows in the 1990's has led to considerable interest in the cognitive abilities required for such behaviour and the light that might then be shed on tool manufacture in humans. These insights, exciting as they are, have not yet enabled the issue of why some birds manufacture tools and others do not. Answering that question might allow us to determine the conditions under which physical cognition evolves and to determine how physical cognition differs from more general cognition abilities. Here we suggest that nest building in birds, in which the manipulation of plant and inanimate material bears a striking outward resemblance to that seen in tool use, may allow us to address these issues. Unlike tool use, which occurs relatively rarely and tends to be either present or absent, nest building is both ubiquitous and varies considerably in degree. If nest building does require some cognitive ability, the diversity of that variation allows for comparisons across species to examine the conditions under which variation in nest building occurs and those that have led to elaboration of those structures. In this project we propose to establish whether nest building does require cognition and, by determining the neural basis of the behaviour, to examine the relative contributions of cognitive and motor skills. We intend to do this using a multi-stranded approach incorporating field and laboratory experiments and two 'model' systems: weaver birds, iconic 'complex' nest builders and zebra finches, the iconic avian neural system. We would carry out experiments involving manipulation of the nest structure and varying the availability and kind of nesting materials to examine the role of cognition, utilize cross-fostering as a tool to examine heritability of nest building, use immediate early gene expression and volumetric analyses to determine where in the brain control of nest building occurs and carry out a cross-species comparison of nest structure to pinpoint the major variables contributing to the variation in that structure. In sum, we contend that this approach offers a novel way to address a number of hotly debated questions such as: what is complex cognition?, why did complex cognition evolve? and why are some animals makers of tools and others not?

We know almost nothing about why birds build the nests they do. We propose to answer this question and thus provide insight into the evolution of cognition. The key objectives of the work are to determine whether nest building requires cognition and what brain structures are used. The discovery of tool manufacture by crows in the 1990's has led to considerable interest in the cognitive abilities required for such behaviour and the light thus shed on tool making in humans. These exciting insights have not yet, however, told us why only some birds make tools. Answering that question may allow us to determine the conditions under which physical cognition evolves and how physical cognition differs from more general cognitive abilities. We suggest that nest building in birds, in which the manipulation of plant material bears an outward resemblance to that seen in tool use, may allow us to address these issues. Unlike tool use, which is relatively rare, nest building is both ubiquitous and varies in degree. If nest building does require cognition, variation in nest diversity allows for phylogenetic analyses examining the conditions leading to that variation and to elaboration. Here we propose to establish whether nest building requires cognition and, by determining its neural basis, to examine the relative contributions of cognitive and motor skills. We intend to do this with a multi-stranded approach using field and laboratory experiments and two 'model' systems: weaver birds, iconic 'complex' nest builders and zebra finches, the iconic avian neural system. In our experiments we would manipulate the nest and vary nest materials to examine the role of cognition, utilize cross-fostering to examine heritability of nest building, use immediate early gene expression and volumetric analyses to determine where in the brain control of nest building occurs and carry out a phylogenetic analysis of nests to pinpoint variables contributing to structural variation.

The PI is regularly invited to deliver plenary talks on her work and both she and the co-PI regularly attend major international conferences. The work is likely to be published in high quality journals. The PI currently supervises a BBSRC CASE student who is addressing the question as to why Hooded crows nest on electrical transformer boxes on power lines on the Orkneys (CASE partner is Scottish and Southern Electrical plc). Nest building on manmade structures is a significant problem worldwide and increasing the understanding of how and why birds build nest and choice of nest site is likely to lead to the development of technology to reduce problems caused by nesting. The PI and the co-PI have industrial contacts and they would continue to pursue to develop these. The PDRA and the RA would both learn a range of skills, from the neural to whole animal, from experimentation in both the field and the laboratory. Presentation skills would be enhanced in the PDRA and the RA by attendance at conferences, paper writing and presentations at regular lab meetings. In addition the PDRA would be expected to supervise undergraduate research projects along with the PI and the co-PI. Both would be encouraged to attend appropriate training courses as offered either locally (St Andrews offers suitable courses) or nationally. Nests and nest building attract considerable public interest. In particular, the Botswana site allows for very high quality video data to be collected for public consumption such as static displays for museums. The PDRA would be expected to participate in public engagement activities run by Edinburgh Neuroscience (http://www.edinburghneuroscience.ed.ac.uk/publicengagement/index.html) such as the Edinburgh Science Festival and GetBrainy workshops for schools. The PI would offer a Royal Society Summer presentation, make contact with human basket makers (some contact already made) and with ESRC-funded researchers looking at human basket making. The PI gives talks at a range of public fora (e.g. Edinburgh zoo, Glasgow Skeptics) and would pursue all opportunities to continue and widen exposure of this work to a broad community. The co-PI would offer public lectures and to connect with Edinburgh Neuroscience public engagement e.g. Inspace (http://www.edinburghneuroscience.ed.ac.uk/publicengagement/Inspace/index.html).