Spontaneous quantity discrimination in a family-living lizard

Szabo, Birgit; Noble, Daniel W. A.; McCloghry, Kaitlin J.; Monteiro, Marco E. S.; Whiting, Martin J. (2021). Spontaneous quantity discrimination in a family-living lizard. Behavioral Ecology, 32(4), pp. 686-694. Oxford University Press 10.1093/beheco/arab019

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While foraging or during social interactions, animals may benefit from judging relative quantity. Individuals may select larger prey or a patch with more food and, likewise, it may pay to track the number and type of individuals and social interactions. We tested for spontaneous quantity discrimination in the gidgee skink (Egernia stokesii), a family-living lizard. Lizards were presented with food quantities differing in number or size and were able to select the larger quantity of food items when they differed in number but not when items differed in size. We show, for the first time, superior spontaneous discrimination of items differing in number over size in a lizard species, which contrasts with previous findings. Our simple method, however, did not include controls for the use of continuous quantities, and further tests are required to determine the role of such information during quantity discrimination. Our results provide support for the use of the parallel individuation system for the discrimination of small quantities (four or fewer items). Lizards might, however, still use the approximate number system if items in larger quantities (more than four) are presented. Overall, we uncovered evidence that species might possess specific cognitive abilities potentially adapted to their niche with respect to quantity information (discrete and/or continuous) and the processing system used when judging quantities. Importantly, our results highlight the need for testing multiple species using similar testing procedures to gain a better understanding of the underlying causes leading to differences across species.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Behavioural Ecology

UniBE Contributor:

Szabo, Birgit

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
500 Science > 590 Animals (Zoology)

ISSN:

1045-2249

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Funders:

[UNSPECIFIED] Australian Society of Herpetologists ; [UNSPECIFIED] Macquarie University ; [UNSPECIFIED] Australian National University

Language:

English

Submitter:

Birgit Szabo

Date Deposited:

28 Jan 2022 15:03

Last Modified:

27 Apr 2023 14:48

Publisher DOI:

10.1093/beheco/arab019

Uncontrolled Keywords:

cognition, number sense, relative quantity judgment, reptile, squamate

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/163896

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/163896

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