Professor David Sherry (pictured below) is the awardee of the Comparative Cognition Society‘s Annual Research Award for 2021 for his contributions in the field of comparative psychology. The award is associated with a Special Issue in Learning & Behavior in honor of his research.

In the interview, I talk with Professor Scott MacDougall-Shackleton (pictured below), on the the Guest Editors of the Special Issue about David Sherry’s career, the impact his research has had on the community, the fact that he didn’t only elevate science, he created a new subfield, and some personal tidbits.

 

Transcription

Intro

Caballero: You’re listening to All Things Cognition, a Psychonomic Society podcast.

Now, here is your host, Laura Mickes.

Intro to the interview with Scott MacDougall-Shackleton

Mickes: in the upcoming interview, I speak with Scott MacDougall-Shackleton about being a guest editor for the special issue in the Psychonomic Society journal Learning & Behavior. The Special Issue is in honor of the contributions of David Sherry and is linked to the Comparative Cognition Society Research Award that Sherry won in 2021. MacDougall-Shackleton also tells us about Sherry’s highly influential career. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Interview with Scott MacDougall-Shackleton

Mickes: Hi, Scott. Thanks so much for talking to me about the Special Issue on the contributions of David Sherry’s work.

I first wanted to ask how the editorial came about. So how were you and Rob Hampton selected to be guest editors?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yes, Rob and I are both longtime colleagues and friends of David Sherry. Rob actually worked with David Sherry back in the 1990s when he was a graduate student. And I’ve been a colleague of David’s, at Western, for about, 20 years.

Mickes: And that’s Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. Yeah?

MacDougall-Shackleton: That’s right. Also known as the University of Western Ontario. It’s graded itself as Western university. Now

Mickes: You were naturals then to be the guest editors. And how could you turn it down? Why would you wanna turn that, that role down?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah, we were very excited to acknowledge David’s contribution. He retired a couple of years ago and so the timing seemed perfect.

Mickes: He retired, but I see that he still has a big chunk of funding. So there’s some work he’s still doing.

MacDougall-Shackleton: He has retired, but he maintains a research adjunct position as an emeritus professor. He is continuing to supervise some research and some graduate students.

Mickes: So Scott, what would you … this is a tough question, but what would you say is David’s biggest contribution to the field?

MacDougall-Shackleton: I think his contribution to the field is really pioneering a new field, in a way, perhaps maybe a subfield. There’s an area of research called neuro ecology, which loosely defined is researchers who study cognition and the brain from an adaptive perspective. So trying to explore our different forms of memory adaptations and do different species of animals have different specializations. And David Sherry is one of the people who helped, uh, sort of launch that branch of comparative psychology.

I was nominating David a few years ago for a distinguished university professorship, which he was awarded. And one of our external letter writers actually made that exact comment that it’s, you know, it’s great to acknowledge people who are leaders in their field and it’s another thing to acknowledge people who have created a field. So, David was really, seminal in, in bringing that strong and rigorous evolutionary approach to comparative cognition.

Mickes: Yeah. It’s an impressive body of work he has. And a long list of awards, which sounds like he should have those.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yes.

Mickes: I enjoyed reading the editorial that you with Rob. It nicely takes the reader through a timeline of David’s career. You also wrote in, in the editorial that you didn’t have any problem finding people to contribute to the special issue. Yeah.

And, and there are 17 papers in that issue and many different types of birds are studied: pigeons, hummingbird cowbird, uh, chickies, etc. There was even a paper where his influence extended to a study of brainless organisms, which I, I haven’t read, but I think that’s a must, a must read for me.

One of the papers started with “David Sherry has been a pioneer in investigating the avian hippocampal formation and spatial memory.” Based on that quote and the titles of the papers of the issue, the majority of the papers seem focused on memory. Is that right? And could there be another issue on his other research, say on brood parasitism?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah. You’ve identified sort of a key theme of his career has been on spatial memory and, and with a focus on birds. Many species of birds engage in food, storing behavior and use their spatial memory to recall the location of their stored food items. And David’s work was critical in demonstrating that that form of spatial memory depends on the hippocampus and that the hippocampus appears to be specialized in those species of birds.

But, you know, it would be selling his career a little short to say, that’s all he is done, because as you noted in the, on the issue, he’s, he’s done work on other kinds of behavior, other forms of cognition and memory, and even in other, other taxa. So including insects, he’s done some amazing work in bumblebee memory. Many of his trainees have gone on to work on other organisms. He’s done some work on rodents as well. So he has sort of branched out to explore different taxa, even have always been the heart of his research program.

Mickes: That’s right. He even started an, an Institute or, or something … avian … Um, oh, I don’t remember the name of what he started.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yes. At Western University here we have, what’s called the Advanced Facility for Avian Research. So David was a key player in founding that. It’s a research facility for looking at the behavior and physiology of birds and David, myself, and some of our other colleagues were able to obtain funding to create this $9 million research building that is really focused on studying bird behavior. So, that’s a real legacy to his influence and research productivity.

Mickes: That’s incredible.

You don’t have a paper in the Special Issue, but can you tell us about your research? That’s been inspired by David’s work. I mean, that could be a lot, but so do you, do you have something that you really feel has been inspired directly? I know you’ve collaborated with him, so I, I don’t know. Maybe that’s not a great question.

MacDougall-Shackleton: No, I think that, that’s a great question. And when I moved to Western 20 years ago, I was just absolutely thrilled to join David there. He had been at Western many years previously and it was one of the prime attractions for me to move to, to Western University for my own career. And even though my, my research background deals more on seasonality and animal communication, we quickly struck up collaborations and started exploring, for example, the seasonal components of the spatial memory and seasonal components of the hippocampus, which was, you know, know a really fruitful collaboration that we’ve carried on over many years, including co-supervising students on that topic. But even more than the research itself, I think David’s approach has really inspired my own research the way he really brings sort of rigorous experimental design and clear analyses to his research questions have been inspirational to me.

Mickes: Right. Can you give us a bottom line of what you find in terms of seasonality in the hippocampus?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah, so that one has a complicated answer. The simple idea is that food storing birds store their food more in the winter time. And therefore perhaps they have enhanced spatial memory in the winter time and perhaps their hippocampus might be larger or have greater amounts of neurogenesis in the winter when food storing is occurring. And there is some evidence for that from other labs and, and David and my research. But unfortunately nature is never simple as we would like, and not as consistent with our hypotheses and, and over several studies what we found is that there’s a lot of variation between studies and, when we see the greatest neurogenesis in the hippocampus, that is the greatest number of new neurons being recruited to it, which presumably is related to spatial memory functioning. And so it’s not as something as simple as there’s a specific time of year when birds have an enlarged hippocampus. It really seems to vary from year to year and maybe driven by the behavior itself as opposed to driving the behavior. Our take home conclusion is perhaps the seasons are driving the changes in the behavior, and it’s those changes in behavior are then feeding back to drive the changes in the hippocampus, as opposed to the other way around.

Mickes: What does that mean for us humans?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Well, I think there’s quite a bit of evidence, not only from birds, but from rodents studies and many other mammals that our behavior, our activity does feed back to influence neuroplasticity. And so exercise for example, is one of those key factors known to regulate neurogenesis in a whole range of species. So take home messages, use it or lose it, and that, and that our behavior and our cognition does feedback and influence our brain.

Mickes: Okay. Now let’s get a personal, if you don’t mind.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Certainly.

Mickes: You and David, you mentioned you’re at the same university, you collaborate, you publish papers together, you share supervision of PhD students that you share that responsibility. So you are in the right position, to tell us, well, he seems like a really lovely person. So is it true? Is he a really lovely person?

MacDougall-Shackleton: Absolutely. Yeah, you know, David is one of those colleagues where I’ve never met anyone who didn’t think he was just absolutely amazing. And, you know, even if he is being critical or providing, critical feedback to students or colleagues it’s always done in this gentle and constructive way that makes you feel really good about the feedback, he’s a, he’s very rigorous and, and, and he can be critical, but he, he engages it in a way that builds you up as opposed to knocking you down and students and colleagues universally respond well to that.

Mickes: Yeah. I would love that. I think we should all learn from him in how to do that.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah, exactly.

He actually had a background in the theater before he went into academia, and I think he brought some of that training both to the way he teaches and would give presentations at conferences. So he’s always had a flare in terms of providing feedback, of timing his comments well, pacing his comments well, and delivering the message he has in a very effective way.

Mickes: We’re lucky that he didn’t go that route, the acting route, and that he decided to go with science, but he really benefited from that training or his, his colleagues and students seem to have.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Absolutely.

Mickes: Do you remember when you first met him?

MacDougall-Shackleton: I did my undergraduate and masters in Canada, and then I moved to the United States for my PhD and postdoc. And there’s not that many people in the world who work on bird brains and bird memory, and, and topics of that sort. So I’d always been familiar with David Sherry’s research, but I had never met him until I returned to Canada as a faculty member.

I was at the university of Toronto and David wrote to me and invited me to Western to give a seminar. And to me, it was kind of like one, one of your academic heroes reaches out to you, it was so flattering. And I still remember traveling to London and meeting with him and, uh, just having a wonderful day and being so impressed with his research and his, his students and, and, and the university. And then a few years later, I ended up moving to Western. Those are not unrelated.

Mickes: Okay. I was gonna say he probably played role in getting you over there.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Well, you know, it was a, it was a open faculty position, but, you know, I leap at it having been there and interacted with David. And so he was a real draw to me for sure.

Mickes: Ah, that’s excellent. That sounds like it’s been a really good move for you.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yes, indeed.

Mickes: I’m also interviewing David. Is there anything you think that I should ask him? [David Sherry’s interview is here.]

MacDougall-Shackleton: I think it would be great to ask David how he sees his legacy influencing these evolutionary approaches to behavior.

You know, as you know, there’s a bit of a controversy there. In the 1970s and 80s, there was the whole social-biology debate. There are many people who take issue with evolutionary approaches to human behavior. I always say when it comes to evolution and human behavior, a little learning is a dangerous thing. It’s, it’s kind of easy to think about evolutionary explanations for behavior that are oversimplified and can lead to assumptions about the way we behave now as being somehow justified or natural. Even though the evidence and the might not support that.

One thing I like about David’s work is his work focused on birds, but he sort of applies evolutionary analyses to understanding behavior. And I think a lot of human evolutionary psychology could probably benefit from the same kind of rigorous skepticism that he brings to it. So I think that would be a great topic to address with David, how, how he sees his, his approach translating to how psychologists in general apply evolutionary analyses.

Mickes: I think some of the work with humans and, and the evolutionary explanations are lacking.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah, there’s some great work and there’s some not great work in, in all fields, but, the risk with evolutionary approaches is then people can use it to justify social inequalities or misogynistic or, you know, racist approaches to science, like Francis Galton did. So, you know, it’s been around since the dawn of psychology as a field using using evolutionary explanations in a noncritical way has been a problem in psychology for about 120 years now. So I think, you know, David’s rigorous evolutionary approaches to animal behavior could serve as an example of how those of us who study humans might also want to approach that topic,

Mickes: Right? Yeah. They really should.

You work mainly with songbirds to answer all types of questions from an evolutionary perspective. So what would you tell us who only study humans? Are we missing something?

MacDougall-Shackleton: I think one of the benefits of studying songbird is that if you want to study animal cognition, there’s lots of things that birds do that are comparable to what humans do that are difficult to study in mammals. One of my main areas of research is on bird song and bird communication. Vocal learning is remarkably rare in mammals, but totally commonplace in songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. And so if you want to study the processes of vocal learning and learning to produce vocalizations, how you respond to those vocalizations and use them to modify your own behavior, birds provide an excellent animal to study those topics in. Often, you know, using the most closely related species, like say non-human primates or another mammal like lab rats, don’t provide the best model for the behavior of interest.

Mickes: Right.

MacDougall-Shackleton: So birds, birds have a lot of benefits that way.

Mickes: To study those things in say humans infants, that that would be impossibly hard.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Yeah. And I mean, of course we do study the topics in humans as well, but there are limitations on the kinds of manipulations one can do.

Mickes: Right.

MacDougall-Shackleton: The other benefit of birds is that there’s close to 5,000 species of songbird. So you can select which species you’re studying based on the question of interest.

And that really exemplified David’s career. He would select, you know, is this a question best addressed with the chickadees or a, a brood parasite like cowbirds or beumblebees. He always just chose the species to address the question he was interested in rather than the other way around of what could I ask with the species I study?

Mickes: Oh, okay.

I think I’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you so much for answering these questions and teaching us about how David’s work has influenced the field. I’d be surprised if the special issue isn’t widely read and cited. So hopefully you get a lot of people reading it.

MacDougall-Shackleton: Thanks. It’s been a pleasure.

Concluding statement

Caballero: Thank you for listening to All Things Cognition, a Psychonomic Society podcast. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel using your favorite podcast player or app.

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