Neural mechanisms of social behaviour and social information use in Guppies «(Poecilia reticulata)»
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Living in groups has many advantages for individuals, such as access to social information or protection against predators.The function and evolution of sociality and social information use have received abundant attention in the past years.However, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes have not been as widely examined across taxa, which is crucial to understand their evolution in vertebrates.In this thesis, I explored the neuroendocrinal mechanisms of grouping and the neural mechanisms of social information use in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a species with extremely well-studied evolutionary ecology.In Chapter 2, I compared immediate earlygene (IEG) expression across brain areas of the social decision-making network when guppies were exposed to a large or small group of conspecifics, or isolated.I found higher IEG expression in the preoptic area when guppies were exposed to the large group, compared to control (isolated guppies).The preoptic area regulates social behaviour in vertebrates and is also the only region in the teleost brain producing the nonapeptides isotocin and vasotocin.Since nonapeptide homologues modulate grouping behaviour in birds and are neuromodulators of mammalian social behaviour, I hypothesized vasotocin and isotocin would have effects on grouping in fish.Thus, in Chapter 3, I developed a technique to centrally administer nonapeptides in the brain of guppies and investigated their effects on grouping.I found opposing effects of the two nonapeptides, with isotocin increasing and vasotocin reducing grouping, at 90 minutes after administration, consistent with these neuromodulators playing a role in a fundamental social behaviour in fish.An advantage of grouping behaviour is that it may facilitate the transmission of information between conspecifics.Thus, in Chapter 4, I explored the neural mechanisms of social information use by studying the brain areas activated when 'demonstrator' guppies were exposed directly to alarm substance (i.e., a reliable social cue released from damaged skin) and when they observed a conspecific reacting to alarm substance.I found that alarm substance provoked typical antipredator behaviour such as freezing and area avoidance, while visual exposure to alarmed conspecifics induced a preference to use the same area as the alarmed conspecifics.I examined patterns of IEG expression across six areas of the brain, finding that the Contributions of authorsChapter 1 (General introduction): María J.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".