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Spatial planning with long visual range benefits escape from visual predators in complex naturalistic environments.
Ugurcan Mugan1,2, Malcolm A MacIver3,4,5,6
1Center for Robotics and Biosystems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
Nature Communications
|June 18, 2020
Summary
The evolution of land animals led to enhanced cognitive abilities like planning, particularly in visually guided predator-prey interactions. This advantage is linked to increased visual range and savanna-like habitats on land.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Cognitive science
- Animal behavior
Background:
- Land animals exhibit more complex cognitive abilities than aquatic animals, a difference not easily explained by a priori reasoning.
- Planning is a crucial cognitive faculty that offers significant advantages in predator-prey dynamics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate why land animals possess more advanced cognitive abilities than aquatic animals.
- To determine the role of planning in predator-prey interactions during the water-to-land transition in animal evolution.
Main Methods:
- Computational simulations of behavior were used to model predator-prey interactions.
- Analysis focused on the impact of visual range and terrestrial habitat structure on the advantage of planning.
Main Results:
- Planning provides a significant advantage in visually guided predator-prey interactions, but only in terrestrial environments.
- The advantage of planning is maximized in specific terrestrial habitats characterized by clustered open and closed areas (savanna-like).
- Enhanced visual range and patchy terrestrial structures create selective pressures favoring planning by modulating agent visibility.
Conclusions:
- The water-to-land transition, with its increased visual range and specific habitat structures, likely drove the evolution of advanced cognitive functions like planning in terrestrial vertebrates.
- The invasion of land may represent a critical juncture in the cognitive evolution of vertebrates.
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