Centimetre-scale landscapes to assess the motion behaviour and cognition of gastropods and bivalves
Abstract
Most ectotherms typically navigate topographically complex landscapes to find food and sexual partners while avoiding predation. However, it is still unclear how chemical, visual and contact cues interact and drive the behavioural complexity observed in these organisms. This contribution illustrates how behavioural ecologists could take advantage of the unique modularity, chemical inertness, scalability, simplicity and affordability of LEGO ® bricks and parts to create hypothesis-driven landscapes of various levels of complexity to unambiguously assess the behavioural responses of gastropods and bivalves and their ability to make choices in response to a range of chemical, visual and contact cues. The present work is based on terrestrial, freshwater and intertidal gastropods and two species of marine bivalves. I first demonstrate the chemical inertness of LEGO ® bricks and parts towards gastropods and mussels. Then, purpose-built LEGO ® -based experimental arenas are used to illustrate how they can be applied to address key issues and hypotheses related to the way gastropods and mussels perceive and react to a range of relevant chemical, visual and contact cues. In summary, this work provides a conceptual and technical framework to resolve to what extent motion behaviour is driven by a synergistic combination of chemotaxic, geotaxic, rheotaxic and thigmotaxic processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life in natural microcosms'. IntroductionUnderstanding how and why animals move is a central problem in behavioural ecology because movement determines how individuals encounter resources, mates, competitors and predators in spatially and temporally complex, structured environments [1-4]. These interactions ultimately shape key ecological processes such as habitat selection, dispersal, population dynamics and species distributions [1,3]. Classical behavioural ecology has long emphasized that animal behaviour reflects adaptive decision-making shaped by natural selection [5,6]. In particular, theories of optimal foraging and search behaviour highlight how animals must integrate environmental information and internal states when making movement decisions [6-8]. More recently, the movement ecology framework has formalized these ideas by proposing that movement results from the interaction between an animal's internal state, its motion and navigation capacities, and external environmental factors [9]. Cognitive processes play a crucial role in these movement decisions. Animals must perceive environmental cues, learn from past experiences
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BibTeX
@article{seuront2026centimetrescale,
title = {{Centimetre-scale landscapes to assess the motion behaviour and cognition of gastropods and bivalves}},
author = {Laurent Seuront},
journal = {Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1098/rstb.2024.0384},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05805347v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Centimetre-scale landscapes to assess the motion behaviour and cognition of gastropods and bivalves
AU - Laurent Seuront
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/25
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2024.0384
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05805347v1
AB - Most ectotherms typically navigate topographically complex landscapes to find food and sexual partners while avoiding predation. However, it is still unclear how chemical, visual and contact cues interact and drive the behavioural complexity observed in these organisms. This contribution illustrates how behavioural ecologists could take advantage of the unique modularity, chemical inertness, scalability, simplicity and affordability of LEGO ® bricks and parts to create hypothesis-driven landscapes of various levels of complexity to unambiguously assess the behavioural responses of gastropods and bivalves and their ability to make choices in response to a range of chemical, visual and contact cues. The present work is based on terrestrial, freshwater and intertidal gastropods and two species of marine bivalves. I first demonstrate the chemical inertness of LEGO ® bricks and parts towards gastropods and mussels. Then, purpose-built LEGO ® -based experimental arenas are used to illustrate how they can be applied to address key issues and hypotheses related to the way gastropods and mussels perceive and react to a range of relevant chemical, visual and contact cues. In summary, this work provides a conceptual and technical framework to resolve to what extent motion behaviour is driven by a synergistic combination of chemotaxic, geotaxic, rheotaxic and thigmotaxic processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life in natural microcosms'. IntroductionUnderstanding how and why animals move is a central problem in behavioural ecology because movement determines how individuals encounter resources, mates, competitors and predators in spatially and temporally complex, structured environments [1-4]. These interactions ultimately shape key ecological processes such as habitat selection, dispersal, population dynamics and species distributions [1,3]. Classical behavioural ecology has long emphasized that animal behaviour reflects adaptive decision-making shaped by natural selection [5,6]. In particular, theories of optimal foraging and search behaviour highlight how animals must integrate environmental information and internal states when making movement decisions [6-8]. More recently, the movement ecology framework has formalized these ideas by proposing that movement results from the interaction between an animal's internal state, its motion and navigation capacities, and external environmental factors [9]. Cognitive processes play a crucial role in these movement decisions. Animals must perceive environmental cues, learn from past experiences
SN - 0962-8436
SN - 1471-2970
ER -