Social behaviour, learning and personality in tits (Parus major and Cyanistes caeruleus)
Date
2014
Authors
Aplin, Lucy Margaret
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Abstract
Social interactions are important for many aspects of the life-history of group-living species. Yet traditionally many studies in behavioural ecology have focused on individuals without considering social association patterns, with an unrealistic assumption of random interactions and free mixing. Social network theory provides a means of overcoming these limitations, with a formal descriptive framework for the study of interaction patterns that integrates all levels from individual behaviour to population structure. In this thesis, I use social network methods to conduct a series of experiments investigating questions related to process and structure in a population of wild birds. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the relationship between social learning, information transmission and individual variation in two species of birds, the Great tit (Parus major) and Blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus). In Chapter 2, I use controlled captive experiments with blue tits to demonstrate that individuals can use social learning to acquire new foraging behaviours. Interestingly, juvenile females are most likely to learn socially, and probability of social learning is correlated with individual problem-solving performance. In Chapter 3, I then use a wild experiment to show that information about new food patches is transmitted through social network ties. There is a demonstrable benefit to being more connected in the social network, as individual with high centrality are more likely to discover new food patches. Studies in the great tits represent the most comprehensive examination of the functional importance of personality to date. However little is known of the potential link between individual behavioural variation and sociality. In Chapter 4, I assay individuals for the personality trait 'exploration behaviour' and measure a winter foraging network for a wild population of ca. 1000 individuals. Results showed that individual personality predicted the strength and stability of social relationships over the winter. Variation in association patterns related to personality further influenced emergent social structure. Building on this data collection, in Chapter 5, I use a collective behaviour framework to examine the role of personality variation in shorter-term flocking dynamics. Birds with more slow-exploring personality types behaved more collectively, preferring to forage at higher densities than more fast-exploring individuals, who tended to feed at the group periphery. Modeling group behaviour, I showed that the observed variation in social behaviour allowed groups to efficiently exploit patches with coordinated action. Finally, Chapter 6 describes the results of a wild experiment seeding a novel foraging innovation into replicate subpopulations where social foraging networks are also measured. This chapter builds on the methods and theoretical framework developed in all previous chapters. The results showed that new behaviours were transmitted faithfully through social networks, and established and persisted to form local traditions. These local traditions were resilient to invasion from alternatives, suggesting transmission biases may be leading to a group-level conformity. This is the first wild 'two-action/control' experiment conducted on this scale and using automated data-collection. It establishes a novel framework with the potential to transform social learning research in wild animals.
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Social behavior in animals, Learning in animals
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