Vladimir Pravosudov
University of Nevada-Reno, NV·Ecology & Evolution
Can natural selection shape how smart an animal is? Cognition helps animals cope with changing conditions, and it varies a great deal between species and between individuals of the same species.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Genetics
Neuroscience
- Topics
mountain chickadee
Poecile gambeli
spatial memory
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Identify the genetic basis of specialized spatial memory in food-caching mountain chickadees by combining whole-genome sequence and sequence capture data with spatial cognition measurements.
- Measure the heritability of specialized spatial memory, meaning how much of the variation in caching memory passes from parent to offspring, in wild mountain chickadee populations.
- Determine how natural selection shapes genetic variation in the genomic regions that underlie spatial memory used to recover overwinter food caches.
- Test whether the genetic basis of spatial memory is geographically consistent by comparing mountain chickadee populations from two different mountain ranges.
More about the research
The causes of this variation remain unclear. Mountain chickadees offer a natural test case. These small birds hide thousands of food items and must remember where they put them, because these food stores carry them through the winter. The team has previously provided evidence that individual differences in the spatial memory used to recover food caches are under direct natural selection.
Why it matters
This work tests directly whether natural selection in wild animals can shape learning and memory, and which genes are involved. It adds basic understanding of how cognitive abilities evolve. That knowledge could eventually inform broader questions about why memory and learning differ so much among individuals and species.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
University of Nevada-Reno: 11 labs on PI Pages, $194M a year on research, 186 research doctorates a year.
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