Cognition: Learning and memory

Certain types of behaviour are so fundamentally important to an animal that they become fixed and heritable, for instance, the ritualized zigzag courtship display of a male stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, and the female’s ‘head-up’ response (Wootton, 1976). Other behaviours, however, are labile and can be modified and fine tuned to fit a particular situation or environment. An ability to behave in a flexible way, particularly in a changeable environment, requires animals to possess the capacity to learn, remember and update information. There are many examples where learning and memory affect the manner in which fish behave. We will consider some of these in this chapter.