ManyFishes: a big team science collaboration on fish comparative cognition.

Area of Science:

• Comparative Cognition
• Ethology
• Evolutionary Biology

Background:

• Fishes represent ancient, diverse vertebrates offering insights into cognitive evolution.
• Their simple neural architecture provides a window into the origins of intelligence.
• Previous fish cognition research faced limitations due to small sample sizes and non-standardized methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce ManyFishes, the first big team science collaboration for fish comparative cognition.
• Highlight the benefits, potential, challenges, and solutions of this collaborative effort.
• Promote openness, transparency, and reproducibility in fish cognition research.

Main Methods:

• Establish an infrastructure for communication and coordination among diverse collaborators.
• Implement standardized testing procedures for cross-species comparisons.
• Facilitate large-scale data collection and analysis in fish behavior.

Main Results:

• The ManyFishes initiative aims to overcome practical limitations in fish cognition research.
• It fosters collaboration to address challenges in cross-species comparisons.
• The project promotes a standardized, reproducible approach to studying fish intelligence.

Conclusions:

• ManyFishes is poised to significantly advance our understanding of fish cognition and vertebrate intelligence.
• The initiative invites researchers to join and contribute to this large-scale collaborative effort.
• This approach will enable more robust and comprehensive insights into the cognitive abilities of fishes.