Behavioral flexibility in an invasive bird is independent of other behaviors

• Main Author: Corina J. Logan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: PeerJ Inc. 2016-07-01
• Series: PeerJ
• Subjects: Individual variation; Behavioral flexibility; Exploration; Neophobia; Motor diversity; Quiscalus mexicanus
• Online Access: https://peerj.com/articles/2215.pdf

Behavioral flexibility is considered important for a species to adapt to environmental change. However, it is unclear how behavioral flexibility works: it relates to problem solving ability and speed in unpredictable ways, which leaves an open question of whether behavioral flexibility varies with differences in other behaviors. If present, such correlations would mask which behavior causes individuals to vary. I investigated whether behavioral flexibility (reversal learning) performances were linked with other behaviors in great-tailed grackles, an invasive bird. I found that behavioral flexibility did not significantly correlate with neophobia, exploration, risk aversion, persistence, or motor diversity. This suggests that great-tailed grackle performance in behavioral flexibility tasks reflects a distinct source of individual variation. Maintaining multiple distinct sources of individual variation, and particularly variation in behavioral flexibility, may be a mechanism for coping with the diversity of novel elements in their environments and facilitate this species’ invasion success.