Abstract
The effects of urbanization on avian cognition remain poorly understood. Risk-taking behaviors like boldness, neophobia and flight distance are thought to affect opportunism and innovativeness, and should also vary with urbanization. Here, we investigate variation in risk-taking behaviors in the field in an avian assemblage of nine species that forage together in Barbados and for which innovation rate is known from previous work. We predicted that birds from highly urbanized areas would show more risk-taking behavior than conspecifics from less urbanized parts of the island and that the differences would be strongest in the most innovative of the species. Overall, we found that urban birds are bolder, less neophobic and have shorter flight distances than their less urbanized conspecifics. Additionally, we detected between-species differences in the effect of urbanization on flight distance, more innovative species showing smaller differences in flight distance between areas. Our results suggest that, within successful urban colonizers, species differences in innovativeness may affect the way species change their risk-taking behaviors in response to the urban environment.
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Acknowledgments
SD was funded by postdoctoral fellowships from the Fondation Fyssen (France) and from the Australian Research Council, JNA by Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologie du Québec and Hydro-Québec doctoral scholarships, LL by a Discovery grant from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada, LK by NSERC postgraduate fellowship.
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Research on birds of Barbados is conducted with permission from the McGill University Animal Care Committee (Protocol 2013-7140) and the Natural Heritage Department of the Barbados Ministry of Environment and Drainage.
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Simon Ducatez and Jean-Nicolas Audet have contributed equally to the study.
This article is part of the Special Issue Animal cognition in a human-dominated world.
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Ducatez, S., Audet, JN., Rodriguez, J.R. et al. Innovativeness and the effects of urbanization on risk-taking behaviors in wild Barbados birds. Anim Cogn 20, 33–42 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1007-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-1007-0