Effects of maternal age and environmental enrichment on learning ability and brain size

It is well known that maternal age at reproduction affects offspring lifespan and some other fitness-related traits, but it remains understudied whether maternal senescence affects how offspring respond to their environments. Early environment often plays a significant role in the development of an animal’s behavioral phenotype. For example, complex environments can promote changes in cognitive ability and brain morphology in young animals. Here, we study whether and how maternal effect senescence influences offspring plasticity in cognition, group behavior, and brain morphology in response to environmental complexity. For this, juvenile three-spined sticklebacks from young and old mothers (i.e. 1-year and 2-years-old) were exposed to different levels of environmental enrichment and complexity (i.e. none, simple and complex), and their behavior, cognitive ability, and brain size were measured. Exposing fish to enriched conditions improved individual learning ability assessed by a repeat..., , , # Effects of maternal age and environmental enrichment on learning ability and brain size

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fxpnvx11h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fxpnvx11h)

The dataset provided includes all data necessary to reproduce the analyses and results contained in the article.

## Description of the data and file structure

The Excel consists of 7 sheets named as 'ind', 'cog', 'cog2', 'repgrowth', 'aggression', 'activ' and 'expl' for reproducing the analyses at the individual level, analyses of repeated measures of detour-reaching tasks scores before and after treatment, body size and mass, and data for behavioural assessment of agression, activity and exploration respectively.

Here is the description of the abreviations used:

**'ind'**

id: individual identity.

tank: tank identity in which the group of fish was maintained.

agedam: age of mother ( o = old and y = young).

tag: colour of the elastomer tag.

family: family identity.

dam: identity of the mother.

sire: fat...