Group-living animals can affect each other's behaviour, causing changes in the rate or type of behaviours performed (social facilitation), or convergence in behaviour to that displayed by the majority of neighbours (social conformity). Facilitation and conformity effects can act to reduce direct competition and/or enable social coordination, and the degree to which individuals can affect each other's behaviour can depend upon the identities and traits of those interacting. To investigate the effect of social partners on individual behaviour, we studied the activity of Java sparrows (Lonchura oryzivora) in three contexts (alone, in the presence of three males, or in the presence of three females) and in two conditions (novel environment and novel object tests). A significant proportion of variation in bird activity across trials was attributed to variation among individuals, indicating a personality trait. However, activity varied systematically according to whether birds were tested alone or in the presence of companions. We found that irrespective of the focal bird's sex, individuals were more active in a social context compared to when alone, and this effect was greatest when focal birds were in the presence of male companions. Overall, our findings demonstrate facilitative effects of social partners on Java sparrow activity, and the magnitude of this effect depends on the sex of companions. These results therefore support the hypothesis that social isolation causes behavioural inhibition (which may be caused by increased perception of risk), and future studies should carefully assess the ecological and evolutionary consequences for the emergence of social facilitation, inhibition or conformity across different species and contexts.
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