CAREER: The Neurobiology of Neophobia in a Wild Songbird

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

Because novel urban and suburban environments are replacing natural environments on a global scale, neophobia, or an animal’s fearful response to novel objects, foods, or environments, is a behavior with critical relevance for wild populations. In many species, including humans, different individuals respond very differently to novelty. However, it is still poorly understood what causes differences in neophobia among individuals. The proposed work will help fill this knowledge gap by testing whether individual variation in one key brain region, the hippocampus, can help explain individual variation in neophobia. This work will build on previous research on a well-studied wild songbird, the house sparrow, and take advantage of wide and repeatable individual variation in neophobia in this species. Through three linked research and educational aims, this research will engage a diverse population of undergraduate students in an active research program in the neurobiology of behavior, and develop a clear and replicable approach for how to combine research and teaching at a large public university. This research will also provide critical insights into how differences in neurobiology can lead to differences in behavior, and reveal how social experiences may change the brain to decrease fearful behavior towards novelty. This, in turn, will help us understand the ability of animals to adapt to environmental change. Neophobia may be particularly important in determining why some individuals, populations, and species are able to persist in human-altered landscapes while others are not. The proposed research will combine transcriptomics, molecular biology, endocrinology, neurobiology, and individual and social behavior to significantly advance our mechanistic understanding of this critical behavioral phenotype. These projects will also provide essential data about how different brain regions mediate the ways animals perceive and respond to the world, and how evolution has conserved or modified the functions of those regions and molecular mediators within those regions. The first aim will use classic experimental neuroendocrine methods to temporarily inactivate the caudal dorsomedial hippocampus and test the role of two neuroendocrine receptors (dopamine receptor 2 and estrogen receptor beta) that show expression differences in neophobic and non-neophobic birds. The second aim will use PhosphoTRAP to assess whether an observed change in neophobia in response to social learning is associated with altered novelty-seeking and anxiety-related gene expression in hippocampal neurons. The third aim will expand the scope of this research by developing a new Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) lab through the highly successful LSU CURE program to test whether neophobia is part of a behavioral syndrome in house sparrows, and to examine gene expression in brain regions connected to the hippocampus in birds exposed to a social learning paradigm. This research is jointly funded by the Behavioral Systems Cluster, the Neural Systems Cluster; Modulation Program, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.