Data from: Age-dependent social learning in a lizard

Evidence of social learning, whereby the actions of an animal facilitate the acquisition of new information by another, is taxonomically biased towards mammals, especially primates, and birds. However, social learning need not be limited to group-living animals because species with less interaction can still benefit from learning about potential predators, food sources, rivals and mates. We trained male skinks (Eulamprus quoyii), a mostly solitary lizard from eastern Australia, in a two-step foraging task. Lizards belonging to ‘young’ and ‘old’ age classes were presented with a novel instrumental task (displacing a lid) and an association task (reward under blue lid). We did not find evidence for age-dependent learning of the instrumental task; however, young males in the presence of a demonstrator learnt the association task faster than young males without a demonstrator, whereas old males in both treatments had similar success rates. We present the first evidence of age-dependent social learning in a lizard and suggest that the use of social information for learning may be more widespread than previously believed.

Usage Notes

task1_dataTrial by trial data for all lizards in instrumental task (task 1). "Liz.ID" is a combination of toe-clips and PIT tags. "Dem.ID" is the ID of the demonstrating lizard. "Batch" is the batch number (three-level factor) each lizard was associated with. "Treat" two-level factor of treatment - SL = Social demonstration, C = Control. "Age" - two-level factor identifying age class of lizard. "LT" are learning trials - i.e. trials until the lizard learnt. "correct.incorrect" - whether the lizard flipped the yellow lid successfully (1) or unsuccessfully (0). "Lat_min1" - time from start of trial to the point when the lizard successfully flipped the yellow lid. "Learn" two level factor identifying whether the lizard learn the task (1) or not (0). 'trial' trial number for each lizard. "juldat" is the jillian date that each trial was run.data_T1_final.csvdata_T2_finalTrial by trial data for all lizards in association task (task 2). "Liz.ID" is a combination of toe-clips and PIT tags. "Dem.ID" is the ID of the demonstrating lizard. "Batch" is the batch number (three-level factor) each lizard was associated with. "Treat" two-level factor of treatment - SL = Social demonstration, C = Control. "Age" - two-level factor identifying age class of lizard. "LT" are learning trials - i.e. trials until the lizard learnt. "correct.incorrect" - whether the lizard flipped the blue lid successfully (1) or unsuccessfully (0). "Lat_Blue.min1" - time from start of trial to the point when the lizard successfully flipped the blue lid. "Learn" two level factor identifying whether the lizard learnt the task (1) or not (0). 'trial' trial number for each lizard. "juldat" is the jillian date that each trial was run. "blue.choice" - whether the lizard choose only the blue lid (1) or whether the lizard choose either the blue then the white or only the white lid (0).