On the impact of the coping type on behavioural flexibility and stress reactivity of dwarf goats during learning

• Applicant: Dr. Susann Oesterwind
• Subject Area: Animal Breeding, Animal Nutrition, Animal Husbandry
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 247526520

During the confrontation with specific classes of environmental stimuli, individual differences that are consistent across various situations have been described in animals with regard to behavioural as well as physiological characteristics. During coping with challenging or threatening events, several animal species show distinct patterns of behavioural, neuroendocrine and autonomic stress response, which are described as coping types. Tests that measure different facets of boldness and behavioural flexibility often discriminate between a proactive and a reactive type. Behavioural flexibility is defined as the ability of an individual to react on environmental stimuli and to adapt its behaviour to changing conditions. Differences in behavioural flexibility seem to be an important underlying attribute or feature of the coping types described above and can explain individual differences in a variety of behaviours and situations.In the present study, the coping type (proactive, intermediate or reactive) of 20 female juvenile dwarf goats each in six experimental groups will be determined by the analysis of their behaviour in the backtest and the novel-object test. Afterwards, the animals should learn visual discrimination tasks at an automated learning device that is situated in the home pen of the goats and available 24 hours a day. After successful training of a four-choice discrimination task, we will investigate reversal learning. Thereby, previously unrewarded symbols are now offered as the rewarded symbol. Simultaneously, we will study behavioural flexibility of the goats in a spatial discrimination task. After the animals had learned to choose one alley in a Y-maze, we investigate spatial reversal learning by changing the rewarded alley. In both contexts, we analyse the impact of the coping type on learning performance in the original and the reversed task. The autonomous regulation during mental stress will be investigated by analysing heart rate- and blood pressure variability in the context of visual or spatial learning tasks and depending on the coping type. For this purpose, a digital transmitter will be implanted in the goats, which records on-line the ECG and the blood pressure curve of group-housed animals.The goal of the project is to identify representatives of the different coping types by means of behavioural testing and to investigate the impact of the coping type on behavioural flexibility in the context of visual and spatial learning. Possible differences in autonomous regulatory capacity between the coping types should be investigated. In farm animals, the knowledge of specific coping types and their impact on behavioural flexibility and autonomous regulation are of particular importance for animal welfare.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Dr. Gerd Nürnberg; Professor Dr. Birger Puppe