Behavioural factors underlying innovative problem-solving differences in an avian predator from two contrasting habitats

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Abstract

Innovative behavior is considered one of the main factors facilitating the adaptation of animals to urban life. However, the relationship between urbanization and innovativeness is equivocal, perhaps reflecting aspects of urban environments that influence differently the behavioural traits underlying the occurrence of an innovation. In this work, we analysed the variation in innovative problem-solving performance between urban and rural individuals of the Caracara Chimango (Milvago chimango), with the goal of determining which behavioural trait (or combination) most explained such variation. We found that urban raptors outperformed rural ones in their solving speed and solving level (number of solutions) with a multiaccess box. They also showed more persistence, motor flexibility and diversity, as well as higher effectiveness in their solving attempts than rural chimangos. Sex was not an important factor. Urban chimangos showed less neophobia and spent more time exploring the box than rural birds during the initial habituation period, which probably determined the amount of information about the system that each individual had at the beginning of first problem solving trial. This difference in novelty response both directly and indirectly, through its relationship with persistence, motor flexibility and proportion of effective attempts, explained variability in solving performance. All individuals showed a decrease in solving latency, and an increase in solving level with experience, indicating that learning occurred in both raptor groups. This improvement occurred in parallel with changes in the afore-mentioned traits, though the pattern of improvement differed between urban and rural chimangos. We suggest that the characteristics of urban areas modulate the novelty response of chimangos, along with other correlated non-cognitive behavioural traits, which act in combination to increase the chances that novel problems could be quickly solved, and the resulting new behaviours established in city populations of this species.

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piecewiseSEM: Piecewise structural equation modelling inr for ecology, evolution, and systematics

Jonathan Lefcheck, Robert Freckleton (2016)

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Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model

Terry M. Therneau, Patricia M. Grambsch (2013)

This is a book for statistical practitioners, particularly those who design and analyze studies for survival and event history data. Its goal is to extend the toolkit beyond the basic triad provided by most statistical packages: the Kaplan-Meier estimator, log-rank test, and Cox regression model. Building on recent developments motivated by counting process and martingale theory, it shows the reader how to extend the Cox model to analyse multiple/correlated event data using marginal and random effects (frailty) models. It covers the use of residuals and diagnostic plots to identify influential or outlying observations, assess proportional hazards and examine other aspects of goodness of fit. Other topics include time-dependent covariates and strata, discontinuous intervals of risk, multiple time scales, smoothing and regression splines, and the computation of expected survival curves. A knowledge of counting processes and martingales is not assumed as the early chapters provide an introduction to this area. The focus of the book is on actual data examples, the analysis and interpretation of the results, and computation. The methods are now readily available in SAS and S-Plus and this book gives a hands-on introduction, showing how to implement them in both packages, with worked examples for many data sets. The authors call on their extensive experience and give practical advice, including pitfalls to be avoided. Terry Therneau is Head of the Section of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. He is actively involved in medical consulting, with emphasis in the areas of chronic liver disease, physical medicine, hematology, and laboratory medicine, and is an author on numerous papers in medical and statistical journals. He wrote two of the original SAS procedures for survival analysis (coxregr and survtest), as well as the majority of the S-Plus survival functions. Patricia Grambsch is Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. She has collaborated extensively with physicians and public health researchers in chronic liver disease, cancer prevention, hypertension clinical trials and psychiatric research. She is a fellow the American Statistical Association and the author of many papers in medical and statistical journals.

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Developmental Plasticity and Evolution

Mary West-Eberhard (2003)

The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.