Socio-ecological correlates of neophobia in corvids
Miller, Rachael; Lambert, Megan L; Frohnwieser, Anna; Brecht, Katharina F; Bugnyar, Thomas; Crampton, Isabelle; Garcia-Pelegrin, Elias; Gould, Kristy; Greggor, Alison L; Izawa, Ei-Ichi; Kelly, Debbie M; Li, Zhongqiu; Luo, Yunchao; Luong, Linh B; Massen, Jorg J M; Nieder, Andreas; Reber, Stephan A; Schiestl, Martina; Seguchi, Akiko; Sepehri, Parisa; Stevens, Jeffrey R; Taylor, Alexander H; Wang, Lin; Wolff, London M; Zhang, Yigui; Clayton, Nicola S
(2022) Current Biology, volume 32, issue 1, pp. 74 - 85.e4
(Article)
Abstract
Behavioral responses to novelty, including fear and subsequent avoidance of novel stimuli, i.e., neophobia, determine how animals interact with their environment. Neophobia aids in navigating risk and impacts on adaptability and survival. There is variation within and between individuals and species; however, lack of large-scale, comparative studies critically limits investigation
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of the socio-ecological drivers of neophobia. In this study, we tested responses to novel objects and food (alongside familiar food) versus a baseline (familiar food alone) in 10 corvid species (241 subjects) across 10 labs worldwide. There were species differences in the latency to touch familiar food in the novel object and novel food conditions relative to the baseline. Four of seven socio-ecological factors influenced object neophobia: (1) use of urban habitat (versus not), (2) territorial pair versus family group sociality, (3) large versus small maximum flock size, and (4) moderate versus specialized caching (whereas range, hunting live animals, and genus did not), while only maximum flock size influenced food neophobia. We found that, overall, individuals were temporally and contextually repeatable (i.e., consistent) in their novelty responses in all conditions, indicating neophobia is a stable behavioral trait. With this study, we have established a network of corvid researchers, demonstrating potential for further collaboration to explore the evolution of cognition in corvids and other bird species. These novel findings enable us, for the first time in corvids, to identify the socio-ecological correlates of neophobia and grant insight into specific elements that drive higher neophobic responses in this avian family group. Video abstract: [Figure presented]
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Keywords: corvids, dangerous niche hypothesis, island tameness theory, neophobia, neophobia threshold hypothesis, novelty, repeatability, socio-ecological drivers, species differences, Taverne, General Neuroscience, General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
ISSN: 0960-9822
Publisher: Cell Press
Note: Funding Information: We thank the study funders: the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant agreement no. 3399933 awarded to N.S.C. Career Support Fund (University of Cambridge) to R.M. Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery grant (#4944-2017) and Canada Research Chair fund to D.M.K. DFG grant (number BR 5908/1-1) to K.F.B. DFG grant NI 618/11-1 to A.N. LMK Foundation and HT faculty LU support to S.A.R. JSPS (KAKENHI 16H06324, 20H01787) to E.I. 19J22654 to A.S. Keio University Grant-in-Aid for Innovative Collaborative Research Projects MKJ1905 to E.I. US National Science Foundation SES-1658837 to J.R.S. Austrian Science Fund (FWF) grants (W1262-B29, P33960-B) to T.B. and (P26806) to J.J.M.M. a Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and a Prime Minister's McDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize to A.H.T. and National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31772470) to Z.L. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Thank you very much to Alizée Vernouillet and Camille Troisi for assisting in part of the data collection with some of the Eurasian jays (N.S.C. Lab), to Camille Troisi and three anonymous reviewers for highly constructive comments on the manuscript draft, and to Ellen Skipper for assisting in video coding for some Eurasian jay data (N.S.C. Lab). R.M. M.LL. A.F. A.L.G. and N.S.C. conceived the study idea and research design. R.M. and M.L.L. project managed the study. R.M. S.A.R. and J.R.S. analyzed the data. R.M. M.L.L. and J.R.S produced the figures. R.M. A.F. K.F.B. E.G.-P. K.G. L.B.L. A.L.G. Y.L. M.S. A.K. P.S. L.W. L.M.W. and Y.Z. collected the data. R.M. A.F. I.C. E.G.-P. A.L.G. and L.B.L. coded the videos. R.M. and I.C. wrote the manuscript, with comments and feedback from all other authors. R.M. K.B. T.B. K.G. E.I. D.M.K. Z.L. A.N. J.R.S. A.H.T. and N.S.C. provided funding to support the study. The authors declare no competing interests. Funding Information: We thank the study funders: the European Research Council under the European Union ’s Seventh Framework Programme ( FP7/2007-2013 )/ERC Grant agreement no. 3399933 awarded to N.S.C., Career Support Fund ( University of Cambridge ) to R.M., Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery grant (# 4944-2017 ) and Canada Research Chair fund to D.M.K., DFG grant (number BR 5908/1-1 ) to K.F.B., DFG grant NI 618/11-1 to A.N., LMK Foundation and HT faculty LU support to S.A.R., JSPS ( KAKENHI 16H06324 , 20H01787 ) to E.I., 19J22654 to A.S., Keio University Grant-in-Aid for Innovative Collaborative Research Projects MKJ1905 to E.I., US National Science Foundation SES-1658837 to J.R.S., Austrian Science Fund (FWF) grants ( W1262-B29 , P33960-B ) to T.B. and ( P26806 ) to J.J.M.M., a Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and a Prime Minister’s McDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize to A.H.T., and National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31772470 ) to Z.L. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Thank you very much to Alizée Vernouillet and Camille Troisi for assisting in part of the data collection with some of the Eurasian jays (N.S.C. Lab), to Camille Troisi and three anonymous reviewers for highly constructive comments on the manuscript draft, and to Ellen Skipper for assisting in video coding for some Eurasian jay data (N.S.C. Lab). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Inc.
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