Immigrant birds learn from socially observed differences in payoffs when their environment changes.

ABSTRACT: Longstanding theory predicts that strategic flexibility in when and how to use social information can help individuals make adaptive decisions, especially when environments are temporally or spatially variable. A short-term increase in reliance on social information under these conditions has been experimentally shown in primates, including humans, but whether this occurs in other taxa is unknown. We asked whether migration between spatially variable environments affected social information use with a large-scale cultural diffusion experiment with wild great tits (Parus major) in captivity, a small passerine bird that can socially learn novel behaviors. We simulated an immigration event where knowledgeable birds were exchanged between groups with opposing preferences for a socially learned

SUBMITTER: Chimento M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11563421 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature