Cognitive processes are robust to early environmental conditions in two lizard species

Animals must acquire new information through learning to adjust their behavior adaptively. However, learning ability can be constrained by conditions experienced during early development, when the brain is especially susceptible to environmental conditions. For example, temperature can result in phenotypically plastic adjustments to growth, metabolism, and learning in ectotherms. In vertebrates, thermal conditions can increase the production of glucocorticoid (GCs) - ‘stress’ hormones. Maternal GCs can be transmitted to offspring during development, potentially impacting their learning abilities. GCs and thermal environments are, therefore, predicted to have interactive effects on the development of learning in ectotherms. Here, we investigated the combined effects of prenatal corticosterone (CORT) - the main GC in reptiles - and incubation temperature on associative learning using two species of lizards, Lampropholis delicata and L. guichenoti. We manipulated CORT levels and temperatur..., , # Cognitive processes are robust to early environmental conditions in two lizard species

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mjr](10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mjr)

## Description of the data and file structure

#### Research paper

This repository contains the data used in the following manuscript:

Recio et al. 2024. Cognitive processes are robust to early environmental conditions in two lizard species. Behavioral Ecology.

Code and full text available at: [https://github.com/Pablo-Recio/CORT_Temp_learning](https://github.com/Pablo-Recio/CORT_Temp_learning)

### Files and variables

#### File: Learning.csv

**Description:** main database used in the experiment, where we the impact of early environments (trt) on associative learning abilities (FC_associative) while controlling for stimulus presented (group).

##### Variables

* lizard_id: identity of the lizard
* position: position of each lizard in the room (which rack they were assigned to) and within the rack
* species: species
* sex: sex
* ..., ,