Exposure to dietary mercury alters cognition and behavior of zebra finches

Current Zoology
John P SwaddleDaniel A Cristol

Abstract

Environmental stressors can negatively affect avian cognitive abilities, potentially reducing fitness, for example by altering response to predators, display to mates, or memory of locations of food. We expand on current knowledge by investigating the effects of dietary mercury, a ubiquitous environmental pollutant and known neurotoxin, on avian cognition. Zebra finchesTaeniopygia guttatawere dosed for their entire lives with sub-lethal levels of mercury, at the environmentally relevant dose of 1.2 parts per million. In our first study, we compared the dosed birds with controls of the same age using tests of three cognitive abilities: spatial memory, inhibitory control, and color association. In the spatial memory assay, birds were tested on their ability to learn and remember the location of hidden food in their cage. The inhibitory control assay measured their ability to ignore visible but inaccessible food in favor of a learned behavior that provided the same reward. Finally, the color association task tested each bird's ability to associate a specific color with the presence of hidden food. Dietary mercury negatively affected spatial memory ability but not inhibitory control or color association. Our second study focused on...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Dec 28, 2018·Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology·Geir BjørklundJan Aaseth
Sep 25, 2020·Ecotoxicology·Daniel A Cristol, David C Evers
Feb 10, 2020·Ecotoxicology·L A GrievesE A MacDougall-Shackleton
Jan 10, 2019·Environmental Pollution·Alexander R GersonChad L Seewagen
Sep 24, 2021·Genes and Environment : the Official Journal of the Japanese Environmental Mutagen Society·Yuanyuan ZhengLijun Wu

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