Animal Cognition in an Urbanised World

Abstract

Explaining how animals respond to an increasingly urbanised world is a major challenge for evolutionary biologists. Urban environments often present animals with novel problems that differ from those encountered in their evolutionary past. To navigate these rapidly changing habitats successfully, animals may need to adjust their behaviour flexibly over relatively short timescales. These behavioural changes, in turn, may be facilitated by an ability to acquire, store, and process information from the environment. The question of how cognitive abilities allow animals to avoid threats and exploit resources (or constrain their ability to do so) is attracting increasing research interest, with a growing number of studies investigating cognitive and behavioural differences between urban-dwelling animals and their non-urban counterparts. In this review we consider why such differences might arise, focusing on the informational challenges faced by animals living in urban environments, and how different cognitive abilities can assist in overcoming these challenges. We focus largely on birds, as avian taxa have been the subject of most research to date, but discuss work in other species where relevant. We also address the potential consequences of cognitive variation at the individual and species level. For instance, do urban environments select for, or influence the development of, particular cognitive abilities? Are individuals or species with particular cognitive phenotypes more likely to become established in urban habitats? How do other factors, such as social behaviour and individual personality, interact with cognition to influence behaviour in urban environments? The aim of this review is to synthesise current knowledge and identify key avenues for future research, in order to improve our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary consequences of urbanisation.

Neophobia and innovation in critically endangered Bali myna,Leucopsar rothschildi

“…We selected this species because: (1) they are highly threatened (<50 adults in the wild; Birdlife.org); (2) face threats like illegal trapping/ poaching for the pet trade and habitat degradation [20] We aimed to quantify individual and species-level performance in innovation and neophobia tasks in captive Bali myna, using comparable paradigms as in some previous species [13,14,21]. We tested (1) innovation through 3 simple problem-solving tasks (flip bark, flip cup and lift lid to obtain preferred insect; 3x 20-minute trials per task) and (2) . CC-BY 4.0 International license available under a (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.…”

“…We selected this species because: (1) they are highly threatened (<50 adults in the wild; Birdlife.org); (2) face threats like illegal trapping/ poaching for the pet trade and habitat degradation [20] We aimed to quantify individual and species-level performance in innovation and neophobia tasks in captive Bali myna, using comparable paradigms as in some previous species [13,14,21]. We tested (1) innovation through 3 simple problem-solving tasks (flip bark, flip cup and lift lid to obtain preferred insect; 3x 20-minute trials per task) and (2) neophobia through presentation of 3 types of novel objects and novel foods (jelly) placed beside familiar food, compared with familiar food alone (i.e., control; run 3x 20-minute trials per condition for individual repeatability) [17]. Further, we tested whether individual performance correlated across the two experiments, i.e., whether less neophobic individuals were also quicker to approach the problem-solving task(s).…”

“…Cognitive abilities such as perception, learning, decision making and memory [1], have been long accepted as playing a vital role in animal behaviour in the wild. Crucially, they determine in part an animal's ability to adapt (i.e., respond flexibly) to variation in ecology and the social environment [2,3], and individual differences have important fitness and survival implications [4]. Indeed, cognition correlates with fitness measures [5].…”

Cross-Context Responses to Novelty in Rural and Urban Small Mammals

“…For instance, urban dwellers have to cope with novel or altered levels of human disturbance, habitat fragmentation, resource availability, predators, and competitor and parasite communities (e.g., Sih et al, 2011). Wildlife responses to novelty and urbanization are thus a key focus of current behavioral and cognitive research (e.g., Crane et al, 2020;Mettke-Hofmann et al, 2020;Sol et al, 2020;Lee and Thornton, 2021). Since behavior and cognition largely determine how individuals interact with their surroundings, behavioral and cognitive adaptations are expected to play a major role in coping with human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC, sensu Sih et al, 2011) (e.g., Greggor et al, 2014;Barrett et al, 2019;Goumas et al, 2020).…”

Interactions between neuroanatomy, cognition, and ecology in Anolis lizards

“…For example, bird species that show a greater propensity for innovation are more likely to become established invaders worldwide ; see also Roudez et al 2008;Damas-Moreira et al 2019;Ortiz-Alvarado and Rivera-Marchand 2020). Similar mechanisms have also been connected to successful invasion of urban areas (Audet et al 2015;Cook et al 2017;Kozlovsky et al 2017;Lee and Thornton 2021;Vrbanec et al 2021). On a larger evolutionary timescale, behavioral flexibility has been suggested to facilitate adaptive radiation on islands by enabling species to persist in new niches that are eventually entrenched via selection .…”