Avian movements in a modern world: cognitive challenges.

ABSTRACT: Different movement patterns have evolved as a response to predictable and unpredictable variation in the environment with migration being an adaptation to predictable environments, nomadism to unpredictable environments and partial migration to a mixture of predictable and unpredictable conditions. Along different movement patterns, different cognitive abilities have evolved which are reviewed and discussed in relation to an organism's ability to respond to largely unpredictable environmental change due to climate and human-induced change, and linked to population trends. In brief, migrants have a combination of reliance on memory, low propensity to explore and high avoidance of environmental change that in combination with overall small brain sizes results in low flexibility to respond to

SUBMITTER: Mettke-Hofmann C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5274642 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature