Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-17-2024

Abstract

Although fish behavior research has a reasonably long history, the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of studies on fish cognition. Yet, there exist important limitations to our assessment of fish cognition that can lead to replicability issues, including the use of small sample sizes, nonrepresentative samples, and unstandardized protocols. Recently, several Big Team Science initiatives have begun to address this problem in various taxa (e.g., ManyBabies, ManyPrimates, ManyBirds, ManyDogs). In the same spirit as its predecessors, ManyFishes uses an approach based on large-scale collaboration across researchers and institutions in an attempt to increase both the number and diversity of fish samples used in cognitive and behavioral research. Here, we tested Lamarck’s angelfish (Genicanthus lamarck, N = 7) in a pilot version of ManyFishes 1, the first-ever study of the ManyFishes project that uses a standardized version of the cylinder task—a detour paradigm widely used in comparative psychology—to assess inhibitory control capacities in fishes. In the task, subjects must swim around a clear cylinder to obtain a food reward located inside the cylinder; importantly, to succeed, they must “detour” the obstacle by inhibiting their motor impulses to reach for the food directly, thus avoiding to bump or touch the cylinder walls along the way. We discuss the results of our pilot study, both advantages and challenges of the experimental procedure, and the implication of our findings for the ManyFishes project.

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