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Effects of Acoustic Stimulation on Behavioural Flexibility: The Domestic Chick as a Model for Early Social Behaviour

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The ability to adapt behavior to different social contexts is mediated by sensitivity to vocal stimuli. Since behavioural flexibility is compromised in neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. autism), it is important to identify early life factors affecting it. Using a virtual reality environment controlled by machine learning, we will identify the vocal stimuli able to enhance behavioural flexibility in the domestic chicks (Gallus gallus). This tractable model is the new frontier for the study of neurodevelopmental disorders, and has a pivotal role in farming. Hence, the implications of this project span from fundamental neuroscience to animal welfare and human-machine interactions.

Disciplines and Techniques
Project supervisor/s
Dr. Maria Díez-León
Maria is interested in understanding how early housing environments impact adult behaviour and health, with the goal of improving the welfare and management of captive animals.
Royal Veterinary College
Dr. Elisabetta Versace
Elisabetta's interests are in the evolution of the fundamental building blocks of behaviour and cognition, predisposed behaviours and specialized learning mechanisms.
Queen Mary University of London
References
Do hens have friends?
Abeyesinghe, S. M., Drewe, J. A., Asher, L., Wathes, C. M. & Collins, L. M.
Applied Animal Behaviour Science 143, 61-66
2013
Environmentally enriching American mink (Neovison vison) increases lymphoid organ weight and skeletal symmetry, and reveals differences between two sub-types of stereotypic behaviour
Díez-León, M., Bursian, S., Napolitano, A., Palme, R., Galicia, D., Mason, G
Applied Animal Behaviour Science: 177: 59-69
2016
Captive rearing environments that induce stereotypies compromise copulatory performance in a model carnivore, the American mink (Neovison vison)
Díez-León, M., Bowman, J., Bursian, S., Filion, H., Galicia, D., Kanefsky, J., Napolitano, A., Palme, R., Schulte-Hostedde, A., Scribner, K., Mason, G
PLoS ONE 8: e80494
2013
Influences of maternal care on chicken welfare
Edgar, J., Held, S., Jones, C., & Troisi, C.
Animals, 6(1), 2.
2016
DeepLabCut: markerless pose estimation of user-defined body parts with deep learning
Mathis, A. et al.
Nat. Neurosci. 21, 1281–1290
2018
The effect of low light and high noise on behavioural activity, physiological indicators of stress and production in laying hens
O’Connor, E. A., Parker, M. O., Davey, E. L., Grist, H., Owen, R. C., Szladovits, B., Demmers, T. G., Wathes, C. M. & Abeyesinghe, S. M.
British Poultry Science 52: 666-674
2011
Automatic acoustic detection of birds through deep learning: The first Bird Audio Detection challenge
Stowell, D., Wood, M. D., Pamuła, H., Stylianou, Y. & Glotin, H
Methods Ecol. Evol. 10, 368–380
2019
Spontaneous generalization of abstract multimodal patterns in young domestic chicks
Versace, E., Spierings, M. J., Caffini, M., ten Cate, C. & Vallortigara, G.
Anim. Cogn. 20, 521–529
2017
Newborn chicks show inherited variability in early social predispositions for hen-like stimuli
Versace, E., Fracasso, I., Baldan, G., Dalle Zotte, A., and Vallortigara, G
Sci. Rep. 7, 40296
2017