Lateralized female topminnows can forage and attend to a harassing male simultaneously

Marco Dadda and Angelo Bisazza

Behavioral Ecology, 2006, vol. 17, issue 3, 358-363

Abstract: Animals engaged in a complex task are often unable to allocate enough attention to a second concurrent task. We tested the hypothesis that cerebral lateralization is advantageous because it enables separate and parallel information processing and allows for a more efficient performance of concurrent cognitive tasks. Lateralized and nonlateralized (NL) female Girardinus falcatus, obtained through a selective breeding experiment, were compared in a situation requiring sharing attention between two simultaneous tasks, retrieving food items scattered on the surface, and avoiding unsolicited male mating attempts. In the presence of a sexually harassing male, lateralized females were significantly more efficient than NL females in retrieving food, while no difference between these groups was found in control experiments in which the male was absent and subjects were not required to share attention between foraging and vigilance. Lateralized females showed a negligible decrease in foraging rate while attending the additional task, suggesting that they may be able to partition the two processes in different parts of the brain. Copyright 2006.

Keywords: attention; fish; foraging; harassment; lateralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arj040 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:17:y:2006:i:3:p:358-363

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().