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Rodentia Cognition

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Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior

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Definitions

Abundance:

Frequency of occurrence of a species within an environment or ecosystem.

Cognition:

The neural process of acquiring, remembering, and using information.

Genotype:

The genetic makeup of an organism.

Ontogeny:

The development of a trait over an organism’s lifetime.

Mechanism:

Systems within an organism that control and regulate the expression of a trait.

Phenotype:

The physical expression of the genotype.

Proximate:

Factors (ontogeny or mechanism) affecting an organism’s phenotype throughout its lifetime.

Rodent:

A mammal belonging to the order Rodentia, characterized by a single pair of continuously growing (unrooted) incisors on both the upper and lower jaws.

Trait:

A character or feature of an organism.

Ultimate:

The function and/or evolution (particularly natural selection) of phenotypic traits.

Introduction

Rodents (from the Latin rodere, meaning “to gnaw”) are the largest mammalian order (40%), comprising nearly 2300 species. They are diverse and abundant,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia

    Misha Kyla Rowell & Tasmin Lee Rymer

  2. Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia

    Misha Kyla Rowell & Tasmin Lee Rymer

  3. School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Tasmin Lee Rymer

Authors
  1. Misha Kyla Rowell
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  2. Tasmin Lee Rymer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tasmin Lee Rymer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Jennifer Vonk

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Texas Christian University, Forth Worth, USA

    Kenneth Leising

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Rowell, M.K., Rymer, T.L. (2022). Rodentia Cognition. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_796

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