RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 027706
DO 10.1101/027706
A1 Corina J. Logan
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/02/027706.abstract
AB Behavioral flexibility is considered an important trait for adapting to environmental change, but it is unclear what it is, how it works, and whether it is a problem solving ability. I investigated behavioral flexibility and problem solving abilities experimentally in great-tailed grackles, an invasive species and thus a likely candidate for possessing behavioral flexibility. I found that grackles are behaviorally flexible and good problem solvers, they vary in behavioral flexibility across contexts, flexibility did not correlate with problem solving ability, and those that are more flexible did not necessarily use more learning strategies. It appears that behavioral flexibility can be an independent trait that varies across contexts. Maintaining such a high level of variation could be a mechanism underlying successful species invasions. These results highlight the need to investigate how individuals use behavior to react to changing environments.