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SUMMARY:A memory of hunger? Effects of early-life adversity on adult forag
 ing decisions. - Professor Melissa Bateson\, Centre for Behaviour and Evol
 ution/ Institute of Neuroscience\, Newcastle University
DTSTART:20160212T163000Z
DTEND:20160212T180000Z
UID:TALK63153@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Louise White
DESCRIPTION:Behavioural ecology has provided many examples of how the beha
 viour of animals can respond adaptively to changes in their current state.
  In most of these cases\, the states studied are reversible\, short-term s
 tates such as level of fat reserves. However\, it is also possible for an 
 animal’s state to be permanently altered by the conditions that it exper
 iences early in its development. In my talk I will explore the hypothesis 
 that animals could develop adaptive behavioural responses to the state res
 ulting from their early developmental experience. We call this type of ada
 ptive developmental plasticity (ADP) somatic-state based ADP to distinguis
 h it from the more commonly discussed informational ADP\, in which animals
  develop a phenotype that adapts them to a future environment predicted by
  a cue received during development. For the past three years\, we have bee
 n using the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) as a model in which to ex
 plore how early-life adversity alters both state and adult food-related co
 gnition and behaviour. We have developed short\, post-hatching experimenta
 l manipulations of both food restriction and/or psychosocial stress\, insp
 ired by the consequences of natural variation in brood size in starlings. 
 As a measure of how these manipulations affect state we have been using er
 ythrocyte telomere length (ETL). ETL is a measure of cellular aging\, that
  we argue provides an integrative biomarker of the cumulative stress exper
 ienced by a developing bird\, and also prospectively predicts its future m
 orbidity and mortality. Using a range of different foraging tasks we have 
 shown that birds with poorer state\, as indexed by shorter ETL\, also show
  a suite of changes in foraging behaviour\, including being faster to appr
 oach known food sources\, faster to investigate unknown food sources and m
 ore impulsive when given a choice between a small immediate reward and a l
 arger\, but more delayed reward. Together these differences are suggestive
  of a “psychology of hunger” similar to that seen in acutely hungry an
 imals. I suggest that this adult psychological phenotype could be an adapt
 ive\, plastic response to the impaired state of the birds\, and hence a ca
 se of somatic state-based ADP. I discuss how we can test whether a particu
 lar case of developmental plasticity is adaptive and how we could distingu
 ish somatic-state based plasticity from informational plasticity.\n\nBiogr
 aphy for Melissa Bateson\nMelissa Bateson is currently Professor of Etholo
 gy at Newcastle University in the UK. She grew up in an academic family in
  Cambridge but migrated to Oxford for a BA in Zoology tutored by Richard D
 awkins\, followed by a DPhil with Alex Kacelnik\, studying the foraging de
 cisions of European starlings. During a post-doctoral fellowship in Warren
  Meck’s lab at Duke University in the USA she studied the psychopharmaco
 logy of interval timing. She returned to a Royal Society University Resear
 ch Fellowship at Newcastle University in 1998. She has stayed Newcastle ev
 er since\, moving through departments of psychology\, biology and currentl
 y the Institute of Neuroscience. She has worked on a range of species over
  the course of her career from honey bees to chimpanzees\, but has always 
 maintained a loyalty to starlings. Over the past decade she has become int
 erested in emotion\, what it is\, how we can measure it in non-verbal subj
 ects and latterly the developmental origins of low mood. Her interests in 
 developmental origins of mood have recently led her to think more broadly 
 about how early developmental experiences shape cognition and decision mak
 ing. She is currently collaborating with her husband\, behavioural biologi
 st Daniel Nettle to explore whether\, and if so how\, specific cases of de
 velopmental plasticity are adaptive.\n\n\n
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology
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