The Role of Neophobia and Neophilia in the Development of Innovative Behaviour of Birds

Abstract

Ecological innovation is the adoption of behaviours that allow individuals in a population to exploit newly available, previously unused, or familiar resources in a new way. Innovative behaviours have often been considered the stuff of anecdotes and short communications in natural history oriented journals. Still, in recent decades, innovative behaviour has attracted the attention of researchers investigating very different questions aimed at diverse levels of biological organization. Psychologists and ethologists have been fascinated by the origins of innovation and creativity that might result from play behaviours (Bekoff and Byers, 1998); behavioural ecologists have been documenting the way that innovative behaviours might arise and spread within social groups and through populations (Fisher and Hinde, 1949;Kummer and Goodall, 1985; Fragaszy and Visalberghi, 1990); and ecologists have been investigating how different levels of ecological flexibility develop and the implications this has for different life history strategies of related species (Morse, 1980) and their ability to colonize new places (Sol ef ol, 2002). However, innovative behaviours have arguably gained greatest theoretical importance when related to the role they might play in rapid macroevolutionary changes. It has been suggested that behavioural innovations that spread through populations and change the way that animals interact with their environment can eventually lead to new morphological and physiological adaptations (Mayr, 1963).The idea that the development and spread of innovative behaviour may play a critical role in the propensity towards macroevolutionary shifts is an old one. Over 100 years ago, Lloyd Morgan (1886) argued that behavioural plasticity paved the way to major genetically based adaptations to new environments. The importance of ecological innovation in driving morphological evolution gained centre stage upon the publication of a paper by Wyles gf al (1983). Wyles ef af. hypothesized that the rapid morphological evolution of birds and mammals was facilitated by the spread of new behaviours. By this hypothesis, the propensity to engage in new behaviours and the speed at which they are socially .transmitted are key 176 ANIMAL INNOVATION factors leading to morphological change in vertebrates. This line of thinking leads to the concept of innovation-prone taxa. These taxa are bestowed with qualities that either increase the occurrence of innovative behaviour in individuals, lead individuals to replicate these behaviours within their own repertoire, or speed up or render more reliable the transmission of these behaviours between individuals and groups of individuals.How do we study innovation?Although the importance of innovative behaviour has long been recognized, the means to subject innovation to scientinc study has proven elusive. Innovative behaviours have proven to be dimcult to study within the traditional experimental paradigm of comparative psychology. Successful innovations, almost by definition, are rare events that...

The relation between social rank, neophobia and individual learning in starlings

“…The low power of this analysis means that a significant correlation might have been found with more starlings at our disposal. None the less, these results, combined with previous findings (Coleman & Wilson 1998), suggest that novelty responses may not be a simple unitary trait that is consistent across situations (Greenberg 2003). Our finding of consistent object neophobia suggests this can be considered a temperament trait, as in other bird species (Drent et al 2003).…”

“…In contrast to our experiments, the test subjects in the studies by Seferta et al (2001) and Webster & Lefebvre (2001) were never habituated to the foraging task apparatus to the extent that they fed from it within their normal, or 'control', latency to feed. Indeed, the research literature supports Greenberg's (2003) remark that animals shying away from unfamiliar situations, as reflected by, for example, their object neophobia, are unlikely to assess the costs and benefits of a novel foraging opportunity such as finding the solution to a novel foraging task. Thorough familiarization with the task to be solved in our study before assessment of individuals' learning performance, with the aim of minimizing interindividual differences in object neophobia as a confounding variable, may explain the discrepancy with previously reported findings.…”

Patterns of predator neophobia: a meta-analytic review

“…(a) The 'neophobia threshold hypothesis', adapted from Greenberg [11], predicting that the probability of gaining novel resources depends on aversion to novelty, whereby generalist species are less neophobic and gain novel resources more than specialist species. (b) The 'dangerous niche hypothesis', adapted from Greenberg [33], where neophobia increases with the level of danger in the niche. (c) Theoretical model where neophobia decreases with age in some species as threats become less dangerous versus a model where species become more neophobic with age because they have more assets to protect [34].…”

“…The 'dangerous niche hypothesis' is an alternative view that the primary benefit of neophobia is protection against danger [33,38]. According to this hypothesis, animals should exhibit greater caution in riskier habitats (figure 1b).…”

Sanitary housing conditions modify the performance and behavioural response of weaned pigs to feed- and housing-related stressors

“…Diets requiring shorter chewing times and faciliting ingestion and digestion are often preferred (Rose and Kyriazakis, 1991). The absence of modification in the feeding behaviours of pigs in good sanitary conditions may reflect a lower reactivity to the novelty associated with a more homogeneous and stable environment (Greenberg, 2003). This lower reactivity to the new feeding situtation was supported by the increase in time spent exploring the pen after the diet change, by contrast with the realization of redirected behaviours towards trough in pigs of poor sanitary conditions.…”