Abstract
For an animal invading a novel region, the ability to develop new behaviors should facilitate the use of novel food resources and hence increase its survival in the new environment. However, the need to explore new resources may entail costs such as exposing the animal to unfamiliar predators. These two opposing forces result in an exploration-avoidance conflict, which can be expected to interfere with the acquisition of new resources. However, its consequences should be less dramatic in highly urbanized environments where new food opportunities are common and predation risk is low. We tested this hypothesis experimentally by presenting three foraging tasks to introduced common mynas (Acridotheres tristis) from environments with low and high urbanization levels from Australia. Individuals from the highly urbanized environments, where mynas are both more opportunistic when foraging and less fearful to predators, resolved a technical task faster than those from less urbanized environments. These differences did not reflect innovative ‘personalities’ and were not confounded by sex, morphology or motivational state. Rather, the principal factors underlying differences in mynas' problem-solving ability were neophobic-neophilic responses, which varied across habitats. Thus, mynas seem to modulate their problem-solving ability according to the benefits and costs of innovating in their particular habitat, which may help us understand the great success of the species in highly urbanized environments.
Highlights
When exposed to a novel environment, animals are confronted with a variety of new ecological challenges
These considerations have led to the hypothesis that the success of animals in new environments depends, at least in part, on their behavioral innovation ability [1,2], a possibility that is supported by comparative analyses of human-aimed introductions of birds and mammals [3,4]
Nor was the association caused by sex or morphological differences between individuals; faster innovators had higher factor 1 scores in the morphological Principal Component Analysis (PCA), indicating disproportionally longer tails, the conclusion that highly urbanized mynas were faster innovators held when morphology and sex were included in the same model (Table 1)
Summary
When exposed to a novel environment, animals are confronted with a variety of new ecological challenges. It is easy to imagine that a species that readily tastes new foods and/or develops novel foraging techniques is more likely to survive and to reproduce in a novel environment than a more stereotyped species that persists with behaviors that were adaptive in its area of origin. These considerations have led to the hypothesis that the success of animals in new environments depends, at least in part, on their behavioral innovation ability [1,2], a possibility that is supported by comparative analyses of human-aimed introductions of birds and mammals [3,4]
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