Foraging behaviour alters with social environment in a juvenile songbird.

ABSTRACT: Early independence from parents is a critical period where social information acquired vertically may become outdated, or conflict with new information. However, across natural populations, it is unclear if newly independent young persist in using information from parents, or if group-level effects of conformity override previous behaviours. Here, we test if wild juvenile hihi (Notiomystis cincta, a New Zealand passerine) retain a foraging behaviour from parents, or if they change in response to the behaviour of peers. We provided feeding stations to parents during chick-rearing to seed alternative access routes, and then tracked their offspring's behaviour. Once independent, juveniles formed mixed-treatment social groups, where they did not retain preferences from their time with p

SUBMITTER: Franks VR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7739504 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature