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Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird

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 experimentally in great-tailed grackles, an invasive bird s...

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Autor principal: Logan, Corina J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4860340/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27168984
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1975
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author Logan, Corina J.
author_facet Logan, Corina J.
author_sort Logan, Corina J.
collection PubMed
description 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 experimentally in great-tailed grackles, an invasive bird species and thus a likely candidate for possessing behavioral flexibility. Grackles demonstrated behavioral flexibility in two contexts, the Aesop’s Fable paradigm and a color association test. Contrary to predictions, behavioral flexibility did not correlate across contexts. Four out of 6 grackles exhibited efficient problem solving abilities, but problem solving efficiency did not appear to be directly linked with behavioral flexibility. Problem solving speed also did not significantly correlate with reversal learning scores, indicating that faster learners were not the most flexible. These results reveal how little we know about behavioral flexibility, and provide an immense opportunity for future research to explore how individuals and species can use behavior to react to changing environments.
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spelling pubmed-48603402016-05-10 Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird Logan, Corina J. PeerJ Animal Behavior 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 experimentally in great-tailed grackles, an invasive bird species and thus a likely candidate for possessing behavioral flexibility. Grackles demonstrated behavioral flexibility in two contexts, the Aesop’s Fable paradigm and a color association test. Contrary to predictions, behavioral flexibility did not correlate across contexts. Four out of 6 grackles exhibited efficient problem solving abilities, but problem solving efficiency did not appear to be directly linked with behavioral flexibility. Problem solving speed also did not significantly correlate with reversal learning scores, indicating that faster learners were not the most flexible. These results reveal how little we know about behavioral flexibility, and provide an immense opportunity for future research to explore how individuals and species can use behavior to react to changing environments. PeerJ Inc. 2016-05-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4860340/ /pubmed/27168984 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1975 Text en ©2016 Logan http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Logan, Corina J.
Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title_full Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title_fullStr Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title_full_unstemmed Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title_short Behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
title_sort behavioral flexibility and problem solving in an invasive bird
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4860340/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27168984
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1975
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