Do personality and innovativeness influence competitive ability? An experimental test in the great tit

O’Shea, William; Serrano‐Davies, Eva; Quinn, John L.

doi:10.1093/beheco/arx104

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…During the second trial, birds had access to their assigned diets ad libitum. During both trials, wax worms, a highly preferred food reward 42 , 72 ; were placed inside a transparent Perspex tube 16 cm (height) × 5 cm (width). The worms could be accessed by solving at least one of three solutions: (1) by pulling a lever to drop a platform holding a worm; (2) by pushing a door to the side; and (3) by pulling a string attached to one of the worms from the top of the tube.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet induces parallel changes to the gut microbiota and problem solving performance in a wild bird

Davidson

Wiley

Cooke

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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The microbial community in the gut is influenced by environmental factors, especially diet, which can moderate host behaviour through the microbiome-gut-brain axis. However, the ecological relevance of microbiome-mediated behavioural plasticity in wild animals is unknown. We presented wild-caught great tits (Parus major) with a problem-solving task and showed that performance was weakly associated with variation in the gut microbiome. We then manipulated the gut microbiome by feeding birds one of two diets that differed in their relative levels of fat, protein and fibre content: an insect diet (low content), or a seed diet (high content). Microbial communities were less diverse among individuals given the insect compared to those on the seed diet. Individuals were less likely to problem-solve after being given the insect diet, and the same microbiota metrics that were altered as a consequence of diet were also those that correlated with variation in problem solving performance. Although the effect on problem-solving behaviour could have been caused by motivational or nutritional differences between our treatments, our results nevertheless raise the possibility that dietary induced changes in the gut microbiota could be an important mechanism underlying individual behavioural plasticity in wild populations.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diet induces parallel changes to the gut microbiota and problem solving performance in a wild bird

Davidson

Wiley

Cooke

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…Alternatively, individuals of different competitive abilities may differ in the value that they place on available food items in isolated versus social contexts [13]. In a study where they determined competitive ability and innovativeness in captivity, O’Shea et al [71] found that less competitive great tits were more likely to perform a string-pulling task in dyadic trials, but innovativeness in an isolated context was not associated with competitive ability. This suggests that less competitive individuals may forego a high-quality food resource available through novel means, but competition for established resources in a social context may drive them to innovate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing innovators: Ecological and individual predictors of problem-solving performance

et al. 2019

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Behavioural innovation, the use of new behaviours or existing ones in novel contexts, can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences for animals. An understanding of these consequences would be incomplete without considering the traits that predispose certain individuals to exhibit innovative behaviour. Several individual and ecological variables are hypothesized to affect innovativeness, but empirical studies show mixed results. We examined the effects of dominance rank, exploratory personality, and urbanisation on the innovativeness of wild-caught black-capped chickadees using a survival analysis of their performance in two problem-solving tasks. Additionally, we provide one of the first investigations of the predictors of persistence in a problem-solving context. For lever pulling, we found a trend for dominants to outperform subordinates, particularly in rural birds, which did not align with predictions from the necessity drives innovation hypothesis. When examining possible explanations for this trend we found that older chickadees outperformed younger birds. This follow-up analysis also revealed a positive effect of exploratory personality on the lever-pulling performance of chickadees. Our results suggest that experience may foster innovation in certain circumstances, for instance via the application of previously-acquired information or skills to a novel problem. As we found different predictors for both tasks, this suggests that task characteristics influence the innovative propensity of individuals, and that their effects should be investigated experimentally.

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“…The trial was complete after 2 minutes, at which point the birds were returned to their home cage. Exploration behaviour was recorded as the sum of the number of hops and flights, and has been shown to be repeatable in our population (O’Shea et al, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhibitory control performance is repeatable across years and contexts in a wild bird population

Davidson

Reichert

Coomes

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Inhibitory control is one of several cognitive mechanisms required for self-regulation, decision making and attention towards tasks. Linked to a variety of maladaptive behaviours in humans, inhibitory control is expected to influence behavioural plasticity in animals in the context of foraging, social interaction, or responses to sudden changes in the environment. One widely used cognitive assay, the detour task, putatively tests inhibitory control. In this task, subjects must avoid impulsively touching transparent barriers positioned in front of food, and instead access the food by an alternative but known route. Recently it has been suggested that the detour task is unreliable and measures factors unrelated to inhibitory control, including motivation, previous experience and persistence. Consequently, there is growing uncertainty as to whether this task leads to erroneous interpretations about animal cognition and its links with socio-ecological traits. To address these outstanding concerns, we designed a variant of the detour task for wild great tits (Parus major) and deployed it at the nesting site of the same individuals across two spring seasons. This approach eliminated the use of food rewards, limited social confounds, and maximised motivation. We compared task performance in the wild with their performance in captivity when tested using the classical cylinder detour task during the non-breeding season. Task performance was temporally and contextually repeatable, and none of the confounds had any significant effect on performance, nor did they drive any of the observed repeatable differences among individuals. These results support the hypothesis that our assays captured intrinsic differences in inhibitory control. Instead of throwing the detour task out with the bathwater, we suggest confounds are likely system and experimental-design specific, and that assays for this potentially fundamental but largely overlooked source of behavioural plasticity in animal populations, should be validated and refined for each study system.

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Do personality and innovativeness influence competitive ability? An experimental test in the great tit

Cited by 15 publications

References 67 publications

Diet induces parallel changes to the gut microbiota and problem solving performance in a wild bird

Diet induces parallel changes to the gut microbiota and problem solving performance in a wild bird

Characterizing innovators: Ecological and individual predictors of problem-solving performance

Inhibitory control performance is repeatable across years and contexts in a wild bird population

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