visual lateralization in wild striped dolphins (stenella coeruleoalba) in response to stimuli with different degrees of familiarity视觉偏侧性野生条纹海豚(stenella coeruleoalba)在回应刺激与不同程度的熟悉.pdfVIP

Visual Lateralization in Wild Striped Dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) in Response to Stimuli with Different Degrees of Familiarity Marcello Siniscalchi*, Salvatore Dimatteo, Anna Maria Pepe, Raffaella Sasso, Angelo Quaranta Department of Animal Production, University of Bari ‘‘Aldo Moro’’, Bari, Italy Abstract Background: Apart from findings on both functional and motor asymmetries in captive aquatic mammals, only few studies have focused on lateralized behaviour of these species in the wild. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this study we focused on lateralized visual behaviour by presenting wild striped dolphins with objects of different degrees of familiarity (fish, ball, toy). Surveys were conducted in the Gulf of Taranto, the northern Ionian Sea portion delimited by the Italian regions of Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia. After sighting striped dolphins from a research vessel, different stimuli were presented in a random order by a telescopic bar connected to the prow of the boat. The preferential use of the right/left monocular viewing during inspection of the stimuli was analysed. Conclusion: Results clearly showed a monocular viewing preference with respect to the type of the stimulus employed. Due to the complete decussation of the optical nerves in dolphin brain our results reflected a different specialization of brain hemispheres for visual scanning processes confirming that in this species different stimuli evoked different patterns of eye use. A preferential use of the right eye (left hemisphere) during visual inspection of unfamiliar targets was observed supporting the hypothesis that, in dolphins, the organization of the functional neural structures which reflected cerebral asymmetries for visual object recognition could have been subjected to a deviation from the evolutionary line of most terrestri