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Adjusting foraging strategies : a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

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Date
01/2017
Author
Federspiel, Ira G.
Garland, Alexis
Guez, David
Bugynar, Thomas
Healy, Susan D.
Güntürkün, Onur
Griffin, Andrea S.
Funder
European Commission
Grant ID
Keywords
Behavioural flexibility
Discrimination learning
Indian myna
Reversal learning
Rural birds
Urbanisation
QH301 Biology
BF Psychology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
NDAS
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Abstract
Establishment in urbanized environments is associated with changes in physiology, behaviour, and problem-solving. We compared the speed of learning in urban and rural female common mynas, Acridotheres tristis, using a standard visual discrimination task followed by a reversal learning phase. We also examined how quickly each bird progressed through different stages of learning, including sampling and acquisition within both initial and reversal learning, and persistence following reversal. Based on their reliance on very different food resources, we expected urban mynas to learn and reversal learn more quickly but to sample new contingencies for proportionately longer before learning them. When quantified from first presentation to criterion achievement, urban mynas took more 20-trial blocks to learn the initial discrimination, as well as the reversed contingency, than rural mynas. More detailed analyses at the level of stage revealed that this was because urban mynas explored the novel cue-outcome contingencies for longer, and despite transitioning faster through subsequent acquisition, remained overall slower than rural females. Our findings draw attention to fine adjustments in learning strategies in response to urbanization and caution against interpreting the speed to learn a task as a reflection of cognitive ability.
Citation
Federspiel , I G , Garland , A , Guez , D , Bugynar , T , Healy , S D , Güntürkün , O & Griffin , A S 2017 , ' Adjusting foraging strategies : a comparison of rural and urban common mynas ( Acridotheres tristis ) ' , Animal Cognition , vol. 20 , no. 1 , pp. 65-74 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1045-7
Publication
Animal Cognition
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1045-7
ISSN
1435-9448
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at link.springer.com / https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1045-7
Description
The research was funded by a FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES research staff exchange grant to TB, SH, OG and ASG. OG was additionally supported by Gu227/16-1 and IF by an FWF grant (Y366-B17) to TB.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11914

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