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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on January 25, 2006
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arj040
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received October 3, 2005
Revised November 28, 2005
Accepted December 15, 2005

Article

Lateralized female topminnows can forage and attend to a harassing male simultaneously

Marco Dadda 1 * and Angelo Bisazza 1

1 Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, via Venezia 8, I-35131 Padova, Italy

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Marco Dadda, E-mail: marco.dadda{at}unipd.it


  Abstract

Animals engaged in a complex task are often unable to allocate enough attention to a second concurrent task. We tested the hypothesis that cerebral lateralization is advantageous because it enables separate and parallel information processing and allows for a more efficient performance of concurrent cognitive tasks. Lateralized and nonlateralized (NL) female Girardinus falcatus, obtained through a selective breeding experiment, were compared in a situation requiring sharing attention between two simultaneous tasks, retrieving food items scattered on the surface, and avoiding unsolicited male mating attempts. In the presence of a sexually harassing male, lateralized females were significantly more efficient than NL females in retrieving food, while no difference between these groups was found in control experiments in which the male was absent and subjects were not required to share attention between foraging and vigilance. Lateralized females showed a negligible decrease in foraging rate while attending the additional task, suggesting that they may be able to partition the two processes in different parts of the brain.

Keywords: attention; fish; foraging; harassment; lateralization.
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