Date of Graduation
Spring 2017
Degree
Master of Science in Biology
Department
Biology
Committee Chair
Brian Greene
Abstract
Learning processes can have significant adaptive value in mediating behaviors with important fitness consequences. For snakes, learning may ensure the localization of key resources including food and shelter. Snakes are proportionately underrepresented in reptile learning studies, and the majority of research subjects are within the family Colubridae. I presented captive cottonmouth snakes with two types of learning challenges. In a spatial learning experiment, snakes learned the location of a cover object in a circular laboratory arena, as demonstrated by a 56% reduction of time and 57% reduction of distance travelled to a shelter across a series of training trials. In a foraging experiment, snakes were trained to feed on live minnows in water bowls associated with a landmark. When given a dichotomous choice between two water bowls containing only fish cues, trained snakes were significantly more likely to set up ambush postures at the landmark bowl rather than the control. Untrained snakes presented with the same challenge showed no preference for either option.
Keywords
cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus, pitviper, snake, associative learning, spatial memory, conditioning, visual cues, chemosensory cues
Subject Categories
Biology
Copyright
© Rhyan Robert Jostan Friesen
Recommended Citation
Friesen, Rhyan Robert, "Spatial Learning of Shelter Locations and Associative Learning of a Foraging Task in the Cottonmouth, (Agkistrodon Piscivorus)" (2017). MSU Graduate Theses/Dissertations. 3175.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3175
