A fruit fly’s memory is not a single thing, but a tug-of-war between short-term and long-term processes that evolution tunes for each species’ environment. For decades, cognitive ecology has assumed that natural selection pushes animals toward better memory overall. But neuroscience shows that memory is a balance of parallel, semi-independent phases, and that balance may be what evolution actually optimises. This project tests that idea by using fruit fly mutants to isolate memory phases, evolving flies in simple versus complex environments, and tracking bumblebees’ foraging mistakes across huge artificial landscapes. If the hypothesis holds, it will reframe how scientists understand animal cognition—shifting the question from “why is this species good or bad at remembering?” to “why does this species prioritise short-term over long-term recall?” The work is fundamental science, not applied research. But understanding how natural selection sculpts memory’s building blocks could eventually inform fields as varied as robotics (designing agents that balance learning speed against storage), conservation (predicting how species cope with environmental change), or even AI architectures that mimic biological memory trade-offs.
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ECOLLIGENCE seeks to change the way we think about the evolution of animal memory. For almost fifty years, the field of cognitive ecology has striven to identify ecological selection pressures that explain why animal species show "good" or "bad" memory. But within that same timeframe, it has become clear in the field of neuroscience that memory is not a single entity, but a balance between shorter- and longer-term processes that are instigated in parallel and semi-independent in their underlying physiology. I propose that bringing neuroscience to ecology will reveal that these processes serve different roles in the ecological world, such that natural selection moulds optimized balances between phases rather than proceeding towards an endgame of excellent recall. In this project I will explore those selection pressures. I will use fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) memory mutants to identify the contributions of short- and long-term memory to fitness-relevant decisions. I will allow memory phases to evolve in complex or simple environments. I will explore the mistakes made by radar-tracked bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in vast artificial foraging ranges, and I will quantify the value of long-term storage in the noisy, haphazard real world where fitness proxies can be measured. Across each scenario, I predict that the diversity of available options- termed environmental complexity- will be key in determining whether shorter- or longer-term recall should be favoured. By drawing from the findings of neuroscience to answer the questions of cognitive ecology, ECOLLIGENCE goes beyond the state of the art, towards an understanding of how natural selection sculpts the key building blocks that underlie animal cognitive diversity.
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