Section: Ecology
Topic: Ecology, Evolution

Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range

Lukas, Dieter1  ; Blackwell, Aaron D.2; Edrisi, Maryam2; Hardy, Kristin3, 4; LeGrande, Christa1; Marfori, Zara1; McCune, Kelsey B.5, 6; Sevchik, August7, 8; Smith, Caroline2; Logan, Corina J.1, 9 
1 Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
2 Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA
3 Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
4 Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA
5 Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA
6 College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA
7 Barrett, The Honors College, Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA
8 Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA
9 Neuroscience Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA

Corresponding author(s): Lukas, Dieter (dieter_lukas@eva.mpg.de)

10.24072/pcjournal.591 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article no. e82

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It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly expand their geographic range. To expand into new areas, individuals might specifically show flexibility in dispersal behavior, their movement away from their parents to where they themselves reproduce. Great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) are a bird species that is rapidly expanding its geographic range and are behaviorally flexible. Here, we infer dispersal rates in wild-caught grackles from two populations across their range (an older population in the middle of the northern expansion front in Arizona nearer the core of their original range versus a young population on the northern edge of the expansion front in California) to investigate whether grackles show flexibility in their dispersal behavior between these two populations. Based on genetic relatedness, we observe no closely related pairs of individuals at the edge, suggesting that individuals of both sexes disperse further from their parents and siblings in this population than in the population nearer the core. Our analyses also suggest that, in both populations, females generally move shorter distances from where they hatched than males. These results elucidate that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals, in particular females, differentially expressing dispersal behaviors.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.591
Type: Research article
Keywords: range expansion, dispersal, flexibility, species distribution, behaviour

Lukas, Dieter 1; Blackwell, Aaron D. 2; Edrisi, Maryam 2; Hardy, Kristin 3, 4; LeGrande, Christa 1; Marfori, Zara 1; McCune, Kelsey B. 5, 6; Sevchik, August 7, 8; Smith, Caroline 2; Logan, Corina J. 1, 9

1 Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
2 Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA
3 Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
4 Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, USA
5 Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA
6 College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA
7 Barrett, The Honors College, Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA
8 Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA
9 Neuroscience Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights 
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     title = {Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range},
     journal = {Peer Community Journal},
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Lukas, D.; Blackwell, A. D.; Edrisi, M.; Hardy, K.; LeGrande, C.; Marfori, Z.; McCune, K. B.; Sevchik, A.; Smith, C.; Logan, C. J. Reduced levels of relatedness indicate that great-tailed grackles disperse further at the edge of their range. Peer Community Journal, Volume 5 (2025), article  no. e82. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.591

PCI peer reviews and recommendation, and links to data, scripts, code and supplementary information: 10.24072/pci.ecology.100781

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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