Biology subjects

Miklosi, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Miklosi, A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Dogs' behaviour is more similar to that of children than to that of cats in a prosocial problem situation

Investigating prosociality within a comparative framework is crucial for understanding the evolutionary origins and emergence of prosocial behaviours, often considered uniquely human. We compared 16-24-month-old children and two distantly related domesticated species, untrained companion dogs and cats--both living in the human niche among relatively similar conditions but characterised by different ecological, evolutionary, and developmental backgrounds. We assessed subjects spontaneous behaviour in a natural helping situation, where a familiar human caregiver (parent/owner) searched for an object hidden by the experimenter in the subjects presence without requesting help. We measured orientation and object-related behaviours, distinguishing those explainable by stimulus enhancement (approaching/manipulating) from the ones most probably explainable by prosocial behaviours (showing/fetching). To control for motivation, we added a trial where subjects favourite treat/toy was hidden. All three species showed similar levels of attention towards the caregiver/object. In line with our hypotheses, children and dogs displayed similar levels of object-related behaviour in the test trials, including those explainable also by stimulus enhancement and those likely indicative of prosociality. In contrast, cats only displayed showing (gaze alternation), and even this occurred with a significantly lower probability. Importantly, in the motivational trial, no species differences were observed in any variable, indicating that cats could also be involved in the problem situation if it was their own interest. Our findings suggest that domestication and close social contact with humans do not, by themselves, induce a tendency towards spontaneous, human-like prosociality. The similar results in dogs and children can be explained by dogs social/cooperative nature inherited from their ancestor and the specific selection effects that occurred during their domestication. These factors may have contributed to dogs exceptional cooperativity with humans, even favouring the development of spontaneous interspecific prosocial tendencies.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis) as novel translational model for emotional and cognitive function

Zebrafish have revolutionised physiological screening in vertebrates, but the interpretation of individual-based behavioural assays is burdened by the strong sociality of this species. We propose the use of a solitaire fish species, the paradise fish to keep the advantages and compensate for the limitations of the zebrafish model. We compared juvenile paradise fish and zebrafish in social and non-social exploratory tasks, anxiety tests and in a working memory assay to assess their performance in these individual-based models. We found that in contrast to zebrafish, paradise fish did not show social approach in the U-shape sociability test, their novelty exploration was not biased by the presence of a conspecific in the slalom test, and was not impaired by social isolation in the showjump or in the swimming plus-maze (SPM) anxiety tests. While social circumstances did not affect the anxiety of paradise fish, it was sensitive to the anxiolytic drug buspirone. Intra- and interest repeatability measures of the anxiety tests revealed that paradise fish express more consistent exploratory and defensive behaviours regarding time and context compared to zebrafish. Behavioural consistency in paradise fish was also supported by arm alternation as a predominant choice of exploration in the y-maze task. In summary, our results indicate that the behaviour of paradise fish is less biased by social cues and is more effective and repeatable in individual-based assays than zebrafish behaviour. We hypothesise that the two phenomena are connected and novelty exploration, anxiety and working memory can be more reliably measured and are translatable in a solitaire species.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2023

The reference genome of the paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis)

Over the decades, a small number of model species, each representative of a larger taxa, have dominated the field of biological research. Amongst fishes, zebrafish (Danio rerio) has gained popularity over most other species and while their value as a model is well documented, their usefulness is limited in certain fields of research such as behavior. By embracing other, less conventional experimental organisms, opportunities arise to gain broader insights into evolution and development, as well as studying behavioral aspects not available in current popular model systems. The anabantoid paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis), an "air-breather" species from Southeast Asia, has a highly complex behavioral repertoire and has been the subject of many ethological investigations, but lacks genomic resources. Here we report the reference genome assembly of Macropodus opercularis using long-read sequences at 150-fold coverage. The final assembly consisted of {approx}483 Mb on 152 contigs. Within the assembled genome we identified and annotated 20,157 protein coding genes and assigned {approx}90% of them to orthogroups. Completeness analysis showed that 98.5% of the Actinopterygii core gene set (ODB10) was present as a complete ortholog in our reference genome with a further 1.2 % being present in a fragmented form. Additionally, we cloned multiple genes important during early development and using newly developed in situ hybridization protocols, we showed that they have conserved expression patterns.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2018

Resting-state fMRI data of awake dogs (Canis familiaris) via group-level independent component analysis reveal multiple, spatially distributed resting-state networks

Resting-state networks are spatially distributed, functionally connected brain regions. Studying these networks gives us information about the large-scale functional organization of the brain and alternations in these networks are considered to play a role in a wide range of neurological conditions and aging. To describe resting-state networks in dogs, we measured 22 awake, unrestrained animals of either sex and carried out group-level spatial independent component analysis to explore whole-brain connectivity patterns. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), in this exploratory study we found multiple resting-state networks in dogs, which resemble the pattern described in humans. We report the following dog resting-state networks: default mode network (DMN), visual network (VIS), sensorimotor network (SMN), combined auditory (AUD)-saliency (SAL) network and cerebellar network (CER). The DMN, similarly to Primates, but unlike previous studies in dogs, showed antero-posterior connectedness with involvement of hippocampal and lateral temporal regions. The results give us insight into the resting-state networks of awake animals from a taxon beyond rodents through a non-invasive method.

neuroscience↗