title: Performance of four seed-caching corvid species in operant tests of nonspatial and spatial memory.
abstract: The performance of 4 seed-caching corvid species was tested using 2 different operant nonmatching tasks. These species differ in their dependence on stored food, and differences in spatial memory tests have been correlated with better performance by the more cache-dependent species. Acquisition and retention of a color non-matching-to-sample task was tested in Experiment 1. Acquisition of the color task was not correlated with cache dependence, and no differences between species in performance during memory testing were found. Acquisition and retention of an operant spatial non-matching-to-sample task was tested in Experiment 2. Species differences in the spatial task were found for acquisition and during retention testing. The influence of natural history on the evolution of memory is discussed.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 68588-0118, USA.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Olson
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Kamil
authors.forename: R P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Balda
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Nims
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001288:Attention; D001717:Birds; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013028:Space Perception; D013045:Species Specificity