Behavioral flexibility in an invasive bird is independent of other behaviors.

Corina J Logan

doi:10.7717/peerj.2215

Abstract

Behavioral flexibility is considered important for a species to adapt to environmental change. However, it is unclear how behavioral flexibility works: it relates to problem solving ability and speed in unpredictable ways, which leaves an open question of whether behavioral flexibility varies with differences in other behaviors. If present, such correlations would mask which behavior causes individuals to vary. 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 reflects a distinct source of individual variation. Maintaining multiple distinct sources of individual variation, and particularly variation in behavioral flexibility, may be a mechanism for coping with the diversity of novel elements in their environments and facilitate this species’ invasion success.

Highlights

Behavioral flexibility, defined here as changing preferences according to changing circumstances based on learning (Logan, 2016a; Logan, 2016b), is considered a key factor involved in a species’ ability to adapt to environmental change (Lefebvre et al, 1997; Griffin & Guez, 2014; Buckner, 2015; Chow, Lea & Leaver, 2016)
It is not known how behavioral flexibility works: is it an independent trait, a problem solving ability, does it arise because of links with other behaviors such as neophilia and exploration, or is flexibility the result of an interaction between problem solving ability and other behaviors? There are a variety of ways to measure behavioral flexibility in an experimental context and all involve allowing an individual to learn about a task, which changes after the individual becomes proficient
The latter results suggest that flexibility could be a trait that varies across individuals independently of problem solving ability, and all results considered together suggest that variation in flexibility might correlate with other traits that were not measured in these studies. This leaves an open question of whether behavioral flexibility varies with differences in other behaviors such as exploration, neophobia, risk aversion, persistence, and motor diversity

Summary

Introduction

Behavioral flexibility, defined here as changing preferences according to changing circumstances based on learning (Logan, 2016a; Logan, 2016b), is considered a key factor involved in a species’ ability to adapt to environmental change (Lefebvre et al, 1997; Griffin & Guez, 2014; Buckner, 2015; Chow, Lea & Leaver, 2016) It is not known how behavioral flexibility works: is it an independent trait, a problem solving ability, does it arise because of links with other behaviors such as neophilia and exploration, or is flexibility the result of an interaction between problem solving ability and other behaviors (see review in Griffin, 2016)? The latter results suggest that flexibility could be a trait that varies across individuals independently of problem solving ability, and all results considered together suggest that variation in flexibility might correlate with other traits that were not measured in these studies

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion