Biology subjects

Lattin, C. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Lattin, C. R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Beak wiping stereotypies are correlated with neophobia and lack of enrichment in captive house sparrows (Passer domesticus)

The existence of behavioural syndromes, or suites of correlated behaviours, means that animals may not be able to act optimally in every situation, as they can constrain plasticity. Therefore, understanding links between different behaviours is critical for understanding why animals sometimes fail to respond appropriately to environmental challenges. In this study, we assessed whether beak wiping, a stereotyped anxiety-linked behaviour where birds wipe their beaks on a perch in a "windshield wiper" motion, was correlated with another anxiety-linked behavior, neophobia towards novel objects presented with food, in captive house sparrows (Passer domesticus). We predicted that more neophobic sparrows would also exhibit more beak-wiping stereotypies. We analyzed 1 h long control videos (when sparrows were presented with a normal food dish only; n=54) from three previous neophobia studies to assess beak wiping frequency, mean beak wiping bout duration, and total bout duration. Sparrows reluctance to feed in the presence of novel objects was significantly correlated with the mean duration of beak wiping bouts during control trials. We also found that simple enrichment (rubber perches, manzanita branch perches, and/or artificial pine branches) decreased both the frequency and duration of beak wiping. These findings suggest that neophobia and stereotypies may arise due to similar neuroendocrine mechanisms as part of a "high anxiety" behavioural syndrome. This work also highlights the importance of providing species-appropriate environmental enrichment to decrease the prevalence of stereotypic behaviours in captive songbirds.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Distinct networks of expressed genes are associated with neophobia in the hippocampus of male and female Eurasian tree sparrows (Passer montanus)

Neophobia, avoidance of novel stimuli, is an ecologically and evolutionarily relevant behavioral trait that varies among individuals and across species. Especially among wild animals, the neuromolecular mechanisms underlying individual variation in neophobia have not been well characterized. We examined three neophobic behaviors in captive female and male Eurasian tree sparrows (Passer montanus) from a wild population introduced to the USA in 1870: responses towards novel objects, novel foods, and repeated presentations of the same initially novel object. We compared transcriptomic patterns associated with neophobia in three brain regions, the striatum, dorsal hippocampus, and rostral hippocampus, using differential expression and co-expression network analyses. We found that the striatum and hippocampus had distinct transcriptomic profiles, as did the rostral and caudal subregions of the hippocampus, supporting recent hypotheses that these subregions are functionally specialized. Despite the absence of sex differences in neophobic behaviors, neophobia-associated gene modules revealed sex-specific patterns within brain regions. For females, neophobic behaviors more strongly correlated with gene modules in the caudal hippocampus, a region involved in stress and anxiety, whereas for males, neophobic behaviors correlated with gene modules in the rostral hippocampus, a region that may play a larger role in spatial cognition. These modules exhibited significant overlap, suggesting that neophobic behaviors in both females and males are driven by shared neurobiological mechanisms, though they exhibit sex-specific patterns of brain region localization. Further, this work highlights the importance of examining both male and female animals in neurobiological research.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

Constitutive gene expression differs in three brain regions important for cognition in neophobic and non-neophobic house sparrows (Passer domesticus)

Neophobia (aversion to new objects, food, and environments) is a personality trait that affects the ability of wildlife to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Despite the ubiquity and importance of this trait, the molecular mechanisms underlying repeatable individual differences in neophobia in wild animals are poorly understood. We evaluated wild-caught house sparrows (Passer domesticus) for neophobia in the lab using novel object tests. We then selected the most and least neophobic individuals (n=3 of each) and extracted RNA from four brain regions involved in learning, memory, threat perception, and executive function: striatum, dorsomedial hippocampus, medial ventral arcopallium, and caudolateral nidopallium (NCL). Our analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) used 11,889 gene regions annotated in the house sparrow reference genome for which we had an average of 25.7 million mapped reads/sample. PERMANOVA identified significant effects of brain region, phenotype (neophobic vs. non-neophobic), and a brain region by phenotype interaction. Comparing neophobic and non-neophobic birds revealed constitutive differences in DEGs in three of the four brain regions examined: hippocampus (12% of the transcriptome significantly differentially expressed), striatum (4%) and NCL (3%). DEGs included important known neuroendocrine mediators of learning, memory, executive function, and anxiety behavior, including serotonin receptor 5A, dopamine receptors 1, 2 and 5 (downregulated in neophobic birds), and estrogen receptor beta (upregulated in neophobic birds). These results suggest that some of the behavioral differences between phenotypes may be due to underlying gene expression differences in the brain. The large number of DEGs in neophobic and non-neophobic birds also implies that there are major differences in neural function between the two phenotypes that could affect a wide variety of behavioral traits beyond neophobia.

animal behavior and cognition↗