Section: Ecology
Topic: Ecology, Population biology
Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes
10.24072/pcjournal.320 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e85.
Get full text PDF Peer reviewed and recommended by PCI
It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of species to rapidly expand their geographic range. Great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) are a social, polygamous species that is rapidly expanding its geographic range by settling in new areas and habitats. They are behaviorally flexible and highly associated with human-modified environments, eating a variety of human foods in addition to foraging on insects and on the ground for other natural food items. They offer an opportunity to assess the role of behavior change over the course of their expansion. We compared behavior in wild-caught grackles from two populations across their range (an older population in the middle of the northern expansion front: Tempe, Arizona, and a more recent population on the northern edge of the expansion front: Woodland, California) to investigate whether certain behaviors (flexibility, innovativeness, exploration, and persistence) have higher averages and variances in the newer or older population. We found that grackles in the edge population had a higher flexibility variance (measured by reversal learning) and a higher persistence average (they participated in a larger proportion of trials), and that there were no population differences in average levels of flexibility, innovativeness (number of loci solved on a multiaccess box), or exploration (latency to approach a novel environment). Our results elucidated that individuals differentially expressing a particular behavior in an edge population could facilitate the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles, and we found no support for the importance of several traits that were hypothesized to be involved in such an expansion. Our findings highlight the value of population studies and of breaking down cognitive concepts into direct measures of individual abilities to better understand how species might adapt to novel circumstances.
Type: Research article
CC-BY 4.0
@article{10_24072_pcjournal_320,
author = {Logan, Corina and McCune, Kelsey and LeGrande-Rolls, Christa and Marfori, Zara and Hubbard, Josephine and Lukas, Dieter},
title = {Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes},
journal = {Peer Community Journal},
eid = {e85},
publisher = {Peer Community In},
volume = {3},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.24072/pcjournal.320},
language = {en},
url = {https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/}
}
TY - JOUR AU - Logan, Corina AU - McCune, Kelsey AU - LeGrande-Rolls, Christa AU - Marfori, Zara AU - Hubbard, Josephine AU - Lukas, Dieter TI - Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes JO - Peer Community Journal PY - 2023 VL - 3 PB - Peer Community In UR - https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/ DO - 10.24072/pcjournal.320 LA - en ID - 10_24072_pcjournal_320 ER -
%0 Journal Article %A Logan, Corina %A McCune, Kelsey %A LeGrande-Rolls, Christa %A Marfori, Zara %A Hubbard, Josephine %A Lukas, Dieter %T Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes %J Peer Community Journal %D 2023 %V 3 %I Peer Community In %U https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/ %R 10.24072/pcjournal.320 %G en %F 10_24072_pcjournal_320
Logan, Corina; McCune, Kelsey; LeGrande-Rolls, Christa; Marfori, Zara; Hubbard, Josephine; Lukas, Dieter. Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changes. Peer Community Journal, Volume 3 (2023), article no. e85. doi : 10.24072/pcjournal.320. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/
Peer reviewed and recommended by PCI : 10.24072/pci.ecology.100535
Conflict of interest of the recommender and peer reviewers:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.
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