title: The effect of food quality during growth on spatial memory consolidation in adult pigeons.
abstract: Poor environmental conditions experienced during early development can have negative long-term consequences on fitness. Animals can compensate for negative developmental effects through phenotypic plasticity by diverting resources from non-vital to vital traits such as spatial memory to enhance foraging efficiency. We tested in young feral pigeons (Columba livia) how diets of different nutritional value during development affect the capacity to retrieve food hidden in a spatially complex environment, a process we refer to as 'spatial memory'. Parents were fed with either high- or low-quality food from egg laying until young fledged, after which all young pigeons received the same high-quality diet until memory performance was tested at 6 months of age. The pigeons were trained to learn a food location out of 18 possible locations in one session, and then their memory of this location was tested 24 h later. Birds reared with the low-quality diet made fewer errors in the memory test. These results demonstrate that food quality during development has long-lasting effects on memory, with a moderate nutritional deficit improving spatial memory performance in a foraging context. It might be that under poor feeding conditions resources are redirected from non-vital to vital traits, or pigeons raised with low-quality food might be better in using environmental cues such as the position of the sun to find where food was hidden.
authors.affiliation: Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Eberhard-Gwinner-str.5, Seewiesen 82319, Germany madeleine.scriba@gmail.com.|Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.
authors.forename: M F
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3046-5004
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Scriba
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UPEC, Paris 7, CNRS, INRA, IRD, Institut d'Ecologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement de Paris, Paris F-75005, France.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gasparini
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Evolution & Diversité Biologique (EDB), Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, UPS; CNRS; ENFA, 118 route de Narbonne, Toulouse 31062, France.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jacquin
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, James Parsons Building, Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mettke-Hofmann
authors.affiliation: Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Eberhard-Gwinner-str.5, Seewiesen 82319, Germany.
authors.forename: N C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Rattenborg
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roulin
mesh_terms: D000821:Animal Feed / Q000032:analysis; D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D010856:Columbidae / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D063427:Food Quality; D008297:Male; D000069077:Memory Consolidation; D065853:Spatial Learning; D065852:Spatial Memory
keywords: Columba livia; Diet; Early development; Foraging; Learning; Nutrition; Nutritional deficit; Sleep; Timing of learning