Abstract
Behavioral studies are fundamental to understanding how animal populations face global change. Although much research has centered upon the idea that individuals can adaptively modify their behaviors to cope with environmental changes, recent evidence supports the existence of individual differences in suites of correlated behaviors. However, little is known about how selection can change these behavioral structures in populations subject to different environmental constraints. The colonization of urban environments by birds has been related to their inter-individual variability in their fear of humans, measured as their flight initiation distance to an approaching human, such that urban life would select for fearless individuals. This behavior has been demonstrated to be heritable and highly consistent throughout the adult lifespan of burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia). Here, we experimentally assessed, in field conditions, whether urban life involves changes in other behaviors such as exploration and antipredatory response through their correlation with fear of humans. Breeding urban birds were more fearless toward humans and were quicker to explore a new food resource and defend their nests from predators than their rural counterparts. However, while fear of humans positively correlated with exploration and antipredatory response in the rural population, it only correlated with exploration in the urban one. Predator release in urban environments could relax - and even counterselect - antipredator behaviors, thus dismantling the behavioral correlation existent in natural populations. Altogether, our results suggest that rural and urban animals may differ in some behavioral aspects, may be as a consequence of the selection processes acting during the colonization of urban areas as well as the different ecological environments encountered by individuals.
Highlights
Behavioral studies are fundamental to our understanding of how animals respond to environmental changes (Sih et al, 2011)
When the same relationships were investigated among urban birds, we found a significant covariance between fear of humans and exploration and between latency to approach a predator and a new feeding source, suggesting that selection pressures acting during urban invasion and while living in the city may be dismantling the behavioral correlations existent among individuals occupying more natural environments
Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain the existence of behavioral correlations
Summary
Behavioral studies are fundamental to our understanding of how animals respond to environmental changes (Sih et al, 2011). Behavioral Correlations and Urban Life environmental changes involve phenotypic plasticity rather than immediate genetic evolution (Hendry et al, 2008) Despite this flexible nature, there is a tendency for individuals to behave consistently through time, and there is a growing body of evidence indicating that behavioral variation among individuals within populations sometimes exceeds the variation expressed by individuals over time or across contexts. There is a tendency for individuals to behave consistently through time, and there is a growing body of evidence indicating that behavioral variation among individuals within populations sometimes exceeds the variation expressed by individuals over time or across contexts Such stable interindividual variation is referred to as “animal personality” (Dall et al, 2004), “temperament” (Réale et al, 2007), and “coping style” (Koolhaas et al, 1999), and several reviews have emphasized its potential evolutionary causes and functions under current global change (e.g., McDougall et al, 2006; Réale et al, 2007; Smith and Blumstein, 2008; Sih et al, 2011). Urban invasion seems to be the result of tame individuals from species with high interindividual variability in their fear of humans crossing the disturbance frontier, supporting the disturbance-induced habitat selection hypothesis (Carrete and Tella, 2010)
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