Ingeborg completes her Master degree
Ingeborg has been studying whether the timing of environmental enrichment affects spatial learning in juvenile salmon.
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Ingeborg Alnes defended today her thesis "Påvirker tidspunktet for beriking av oppvekstmiljøet romlig læring hos unglaks?" (Does timing of enrichment affect spatial learning juvenile salmon?). Ingeborg exposed juvenile salmon to enriched environment (plastic tubing and plants, see the small images to the right) at two alternative times, and studied how their ability to navigate in a maze was affected by the presence and timing of enrichment. Unexpectedly, this time there was no difference, perhaps because there really are no differences, or that the offered reward was not to the liking of juvenile salmon? Nonetheless, salmon from the enriched environment displayed different behaviour than their unenriched mates, namely showing more explatory behaviour.
The external examiner was Dr. Olav Moberg from the Fisheries Directorate. Olav is an EvoFish alumnus and very familiar with the topic as he has been working with similar questions himself, resulting, among others, in a publication in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The thesis has been supervised by Anne Gro Vea Salvanes, Knut Helge Jensen, and Arne Skorping from EvoFish.
