Urbanization and individual differences in exploration and plasticity

Is exploration a metric for information gathering? Attraction to novelty and plasticity in black‐capped chickadees

“…Since Verbeek et al () reported that more exploratory individuals were routine‐like in their behaviors and less plastic than slower explorers, several studies have followed suit (Marchetti & Drent, ; Sih & Giudice, ). However, our work supports a growing number of studies that have observed that more exploratory individuals tend to show more behavioral plasticity (Herborn et al, ; Mathot et al, ; Thompson et al, ). Studies on species from a different taxonomic group or with a different ecology than chickadees ( Poecile ) and great tits ( Parus major ) would allow assessing the generality of these findings, as both of these Paridae species are socially foraging, habitat and dietary generalists, who may benefit from gathering information about food resources in their environment.…”

“…All samples were collected within 3 min of capture from the home cage. Baseline corticosterone values fell within reported ranges for black‐capped chickadees ( Poecile atricapillus ) under both long‐term captive (Pravosudov, Kitaysky, Wingfield, & Clayton, ) and wild (Montreuil‐Spencer, ) conditions (for further details on the procedure, values, and confounding effects see Thompson et al, ). Blood samples were also used to obtain sex via PCR for most individuals, and however as sex does not significantly impact exploration score either in black‐capped chickadees (Thompson et al, ) or the related great tit (Arvidsson, Adriaensen, Dongen, Stobbeleere, & Matthysen, ; Dingemanse et al, ), we did not include this variable in our analyses.…”

“…Baseline corticosterone, sex, date, and time of day were not found to affect exploration behaviors in this larger sample. In addition, age was not found to affect mean exploration score in the novel environment, but juvenile birds were found to decrease exploration behaviors more rapidly over time during this assay than adults (Thompson et al, ).…”

“…During the morning of days 3 and 4 in captivity, we carried out a novel environment assay (a traditional test conducted with birds analogous to the open field test) to quantify exploration behaviors of individuals within the flight room that contained four artificial trees (see procedure in Thompson et al, ). The duration of hops (number of hops × 0.5 s), duration of flights, number of visits to each of the four trees, and the number of visits to other features in the room (ceiling, floor, door handles, etc.)…”

“…Exploration scores were generated using the first principal component (eigenvalue = 2.21; Kaiser, ) which explained 81.7% of the variance (see Table for factor loadings). Individual exploration scores in a previous study with a larger sample of birds were found to be significantly and moderately repeatable (CI = [0.41–051]) and are therefore inferred to be representative of an individual's exploratory personality (Thompson et al, ). Baseline corticosterone, sex, date, and time of day were not found to affect exploration behaviors in this larger sample.…”