Evolution of collective cognition in response to novel selection pressures – how individual-level adaptations shape group-level outcomes P52A

The experimental postdoctoral researcher will conduct behavioural and neurophysiological studies using zebrafish as the experimental model system. The experimental model are zebrafish selection lines that were produced through selection for large, small or random body-size for five generations and are reared and maintained at IGB Berlin (www.igb-berlin.de) in the IFishMan lab (www.ifishman.de). Using fish from these selection lines, the postdoc will measure associative, reversal and inhibitory learning abilities in a variety of assays to test for individual and collective cognition, and will conduct experiments to test the consequences of altered collective intelligence in survival. The postdoc will also conduct neurobiological assays in collaboration with other scientists to measure different parameters of gross brain anatomy like neuronal and non-neuronal cell count and density and brain size and density. All analysis will follow a comparative experiment of experimental evolution, where inferences are drawn by comparing selection lines against controls. Experiments will be informed by outputs from agent-based models developed by a previous post-doc of the IFishMan lab (Sbragaglia et al. 2022, American Naturalist). The project is a one year extension of a previously granted project.