Innovative problem solving in birds: a cross-species comparison of two highly successful passerines

Griffin, Andrea S.; Diquelou, Marie C.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.11.012

Cited by 75 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(134 reference statements)

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“…For example, catching insects under a street light rather than under moonlight should only depend upon the motivation to approach a novel context (the unnatural light spectrum of a street lamp). By contrast, producing novel behaviours in old contexts might draw more heavily upon the tendency or ability to vary ones motor actions [26,58,70,71], and, as argued by Tebbich et al [60], morphological features that increase the diversity of ways in which an organism can interact with its environment. Some species, such as keas and Goffin cockatoos, equipped with a high level of spontaneous attraction to novelty and multiple, exceedingly manipulative appendages (beak and feet), might excel at both forms of innovation outlined above and emerge as the most frequent innovators.…”

Section: (B) Is Neophilia a Cause Of Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Innovativeness as an emergent property: a new alignment of comparative and experimental research on animal innovation

Griffin¹

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Innovation in animals and humans: understanding the origins and development of novel and creative behaviour'. Innovation and creativity are key defining features of human societies. As we face the global challenges of the twenty-first century, they are also facets upon which we must become increasingly reliant. But what makes Homo sapiens so innovative and where does our high innovation propensity come from? Comparative research on innovativeness in non-human animals allows us to peer back through evolutionary time and investigate the ecological factors that drove the evolution of innovativeness, whereas experimental research identifies and manipulates underpinning creative processes. In commenting on the present theme issue, I highlight the controversies that have typified this research field and show how a paradigmatic shift in our thinking about innovativeness will contribute to resolving these tensions. In the past decade, innovativeness has been considered by many as a trait, a direct product of cognition, and a direct target of selection. The evidence I review here suggests that innovativeness will be hereon viewed as one component, or even an emergent property of a larger array of traits, which have evolved to deal with environmental variation. I illustrate how research should capitalize on taxonomic diversity to unravel the full range of psychological processes that underpin innovativeness in non-human animals.

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Section: (B) Is Neophilia a Cause Of Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data reduction methods could then be employed to produce a composite score of innovativeness, as is commonly done for individual differences in cognition [43,86]. Several studies to date have assessed correlations across more than one innovation task and this is a step in the right direction [36,70,87,89,90].…”

Section: (B) Is Neophilia a Cause Of Innovation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovativeness as an emergent property: a new alignment of comparative and experimental research on animal innovation

Griffin¹

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…As a consequence, we cannot speak to whether similar behavioural differences in learning 316 and sampling occur in male mynas. In extensive previous work on problem solving, we have not found 317 any sex effects on performance (Griffin et al 2013b;Griffin and Diquelou 2015). 318…”

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confidence: 64%

Adjusting foraging strategies: a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

et al. 2016

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Establishment in urbanized environments is associated with changes in physiology, behaviour, and problem solving. We compared the speed of learning in urban and rural female common mynas, Acridotheres tristis, using a standard visual discrimination task followed by a reversal learning phase. We also examined how quickly each bird progressed through different stages of learning, including sampling and acquisition within both initial and reversal learning, and persistence following reversal. Based on their reliance on very different food resources, we expected urban mynas to learn and reversal learn more quickly but to sample new contingencies for proportionately longer before learning them. When quantified from first presentation to criterion achievement, urban mynas took more 20-trial blocks to learn the initial discrimination, as well as the reversed contingency, than rural mynas. More detailed analyses at the level of stage revealed that this was because urban mynas explored the novel cue-outcome contingencies for longer and, despite transitioning faster through subsequent acquisition, remained overall slower than rural females. Our findings draw attention to fine adjustments in learning strategies in response to urbanization and caution against interpreting the speed to learn a task as a reflection of cognitive ability.

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“…Description of motor actions used while presented with a stick tool use task (techniques 1, 2, 4, 5, 13 and 14 are from Griffin & Diquelou (2015) who refer to 'gape' as 'lever').…”

Section: Motor Diversity Ethogrammentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral flexibility in an invasive bird is independent of other behaviors

Logan

2016

Preprint

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Behavioral flexibility is considered important for a species to adapt to environmental change. Yet behavioral flexibility relates to problem solving ability and speed in unpredictable ways. This leaves an open question of whether behavioral flexibility instead varies with differences in individual behaviors, such as neophobia or exploration. If present, such correlations would mask which behavior causes individual variation. I investigated whether behavioral flexibility (reversal learning) performances were linked with other behaviors in great-tailed grackles, an invasive bird. I found that behavioral flexibility did not significantly correlate with neophobia, exploration, risk aversion, persistence, or motor diversity. This suggests that great-tailed grackle performance in behavioral flexibility tasks reflect a distinct source of individual variation. Maintaining multiple distinct sources of individual variation, and particularly variation in behavioral flexibility, may be a mechanism for this species’ invasion success by permitting populations to cope with the diversity of novel elements in their environments.

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Innovative problem solving in birds: a cross-species comparison of two highly successful passerines

Cited by 75 publications

References 85 publications

Innovativeness as an emergent property: a new alignment of comparative and experimental research on animal innovation

Innovativeness as an emergent property: a new alignment of comparative and experimental research on animal innovation

Adjusting foraging strategies: a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

Behavioral flexibility in an invasive bird is independent of other behaviors

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