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Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Cognitive abilities play an important role for migratory birds that are briefly visiting a variety of unfamiliar stop-over habitats. Here, we compared cognitive abilities-linked behaviour (escape from an experimental cage) between two long-distant migrants differing in refuelling str...

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Autores principales: Jakubas, Dariusz, Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Katarzyna, Powers, Alexis, Frazier, Troy, Bottomley, Michael, Kraszpulski, Michał
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7997188/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33670867
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030639
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author Jakubas, Dariusz
Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Katarzyna
Powers, Alexis
Frazier, Troy
Bottomley, Michael
Kraszpulski, Michał
author_facet Jakubas, Dariusz
Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Katarzyna
Powers, Alexis
Frazier, Troy
Bottomley, Michael
Kraszpulski, Michał
author_sort Jakubas, Dariusz
collection PubMed
description SIMPLE SUMMARY: Cognitive abilities play an important role for migratory birds that are briefly visiting a variety of unfamiliar stop-over habitats. Here, we compared cognitive abilities-linked behaviour (escape from an experimental cage) between two long-distant migrants differing in refuelling strategy during autumn migration, Sedge Warbler (not territorial, searching for locally superabundant food) and Reed Warbler (territorial, foraging on a common prey). We performed a cage experiment on individuals captured in mist-nets. After two minutes of acclimatization in the cage, we remotely opened the cage door and recorded the bird’s reaction. We measured latency that individuals needed to escape from a cage. Sedge warblers were more likely to escape from the cage than Reed Warblers. Sedge warblers generally escaped earlier after the door was opened and were more likely to escape at any given time than Reed Warblers. We interpret the prevalence of non-escaped individuals as a general feature of migratory birds. In contrast to resident species, they are more likely to enter an unfamiliar environment, but they are less explorative. Differences in escape latency between the studied species may be linked to various refuelling strategies in the context of specialist-generalist foraging. Our study provides ecological insight into the cognitive abilities-linked behaviour of wild animals. ABSTRACT: Cognitive abilities play an important role for migratory birds that are briefly visiting a variety of unfamiliar stop-over habitats. Here, we compared cognitive abilities-linked behaviour (escape from an experimental cage) between two long-distant migrants differing in stop-over ecology, Sedge Warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus; not territorial, searching for locally superabundant food) and Reed Warbler (A. scirpaceus; territorial, foraging on a common prey) during the autumn migration. After two minutes of acclimatization in the cage, we remotely opened the cage door and recorded the bird’s reaction. We measured latency that individuals needed to escape from a cage. Sedge warblers were 1.61 times more likely to escape from the cage than Reed Warblers. Sedge warblers generally escaped earlier after the door was opened and were 1.79 times more likely to escape at any given time than Reed Warblers. We interpret the prevalence of non-escaped individuals as a general feature of migratory birds. In contrast to resident species, they are more likely to enter an unfamiliar environment, but they are less explorative. We attributed inter-species differences in escape latency to species-specific autumn stop-over refuelling strategies in the context of specialist-generalist foraging. Our study provides ecological insight into the cognitive abilities-linked behaviour of wild animals.
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spelling pubmed-79971882021-03-27 Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy Jakubas, Dariusz Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Katarzyna Powers, Alexis Frazier, Troy Bottomley, Michael Kraszpulski, Michał Animals (Basel) Article SIMPLE SUMMARY: Cognitive abilities play an important role for migratory birds that are briefly visiting a variety of unfamiliar stop-over habitats. Here, we compared cognitive abilities-linked behaviour (escape from an experimental cage) between two long-distant migrants differing in refuelling strategy during autumn migration, Sedge Warbler (not territorial, searching for locally superabundant food) and Reed Warbler (territorial, foraging on a common prey). We performed a cage experiment on individuals captured in mist-nets. After two minutes of acclimatization in the cage, we remotely opened the cage door and recorded the bird’s reaction. We measured latency that individuals needed to escape from a cage. Sedge warblers were more likely to escape from the cage than Reed Warblers. Sedge warblers generally escaped earlier after the door was opened and were more likely to escape at any given time than Reed Warblers. We interpret the prevalence of non-escaped individuals as a general feature of migratory birds. In contrast to resident species, they are more likely to enter an unfamiliar environment, but they are less explorative. Differences in escape latency between the studied species may be linked to various refuelling strategies in the context of specialist-generalist foraging. Our study provides ecological insight into the cognitive abilities-linked behaviour of wild animals. ABSTRACT: Cognitive abilities play an important role for migratory birds that are briefly visiting a variety of unfamiliar stop-over habitats. Here, we compared cognitive abilities-linked behaviour (escape from an experimental cage) between two long-distant migrants differing in stop-over ecology, Sedge Warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus; not territorial, searching for locally superabundant food) and Reed Warbler (A. scirpaceus; territorial, foraging on a common prey) during the autumn migration. After two minutes of acclimatization in the cage, we remotely opened the cage door and recorded the bird’s reaction. We measured latency that individuals needed to escape from a cage. Sedge warblers were 1.61 times more likely to escape from the cage than Reed Warblers. Sedge warblers generally escaped earlier after the door was opened and were 1.79 times more likely to escape at any given time than Reed Warblers. We interpret the prevalence of non-escaped individuals as a general feature of migratory birds. In contrast to resident species, they are more likely to enter an unfamiliar environment, but they are less explorative. We attributed inter-species differences in escape latency to species-specific autumn stop-over refuelling strategies in the context of specialist-generalist foraging. Our study provides ecological insight into the cognitive abilities-linked behaviour of wild animals. MDPI 2021-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7997188/ /pubmed/33670867 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030639 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Article
Jakubas, Dariusz
Wojczulanis-Jakubas, Katarzyna
Powers, Alexis
Frazier, Troy
Bottomley, Michael
Kraszpulski, Michał
Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title_full Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title_fullStr Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title_full_unstemmed Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title_short Differences in a Cage Escape Behaviour between Two Migrating Warblers of Different Stop-Over Strategy
title_sort differences in a cage escape behaviour between two migrating warblers of different stop-over strategy
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7997188/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33670867
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030639
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