Animal Behaviour最新文献

{"title":"Offspring sex ratio manipulation in chukar partridge, Alectoris chukar: effects of dexamethasone as a high-potent glucocorticoid","authors":"Hossein Daryabari ,&nbsp;Amir Akhlaghi ,&nbsp;Mohammad Javad Zamiri ,&nbsp;Ton G.G. Groothuis ,&nbsp;Zarbakht Ansari Pirsaraei ,&nbsp;Mohsen Taghipour","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123110","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123110","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In avian species offspring sex ratio adjustment in response to environmental and hormonal factors is well-studied. However, inconsistencies in the literature regarding the impact of environmental stress and corticosterone on offspring sex ratios arise from varying hormone dosages. Herein, dexamethasone (DEX), a high-potent synthetic glucocorticoid, was orally administered at two dosages over 10 days to chukar partridges to investigate its effect on sex ratio as well as on circulating glucose, cholesterol and aminotransferase levels, which have been indirectly linked to sex ratio. Ninety-six female partridges were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: untreated, vehicle, low dose of DEX and high dose of DEX. Females in the low-dose group produced a higher proportion of male hatchlings compared with untreated and vehicle. However, the proportion of sons in the high-dose group birds did not differ significantly from those groups. No significant differences were found in egg production and hatchability, suggesting no sex-specific embryo mortality. Group differences in glucose concentrations showed a similar pattern of statistical significance as that of sex ratio that, in turn, correlated with glucose. Our findings indicate a dose-dependent effect of glucocorticoids on avian sex ratio and suggest that glucose may be part of the underlying mechanism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"222 ","pages":"Article 123110"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143438053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Repeatability and intraclass correlations from time-to-event data: towards a standardized approach","authors":"Kelsey B. McCune ,&nbsp;Coralie Williams ,&nbsp;Ned A. Dochtermann ,&nbsp;Holger Schielzeth ,&nbsp;Shinichi Nakagawa","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123102","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123102","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many biological features are expressed as ‘time-to-event’ traits, such as time to first reproduction or time to first response to some stimulus. The analysis of these traits frequently produces right-censored data in cases where no event has occurred within a certain time frame. The Cox proportional hazards (CPH) model, a type of survival analysis, accounts for censored data by estimating the hazard of an event occurring at each time point. While random effect variances can be estimated in CPH models, it is currently not possible to estimate within-cluster variance. Consequently, we lack a general method for calculating ecologically and evolutionary relevant variances and metrics like repeatability from time-to-event data. We here present a solution to this issue. We first describe the characteristics of CPH models and introduce repeatability as an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). We demonstrate how CPH models with discrete time intervals are comparable to binomial generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMMs) with the complementary log-log link. Through this equivalence, we show how to estimate an ICC using the estimates of the random effects variance component(s) resulting from CPH models and the distribution-specific variance (within-cluster variance) from the binomial GLMM. We provide a case study and online materials to demonstrate how our new method for ICC for time-to-event data can be implemented and used. We conclude that the proposed method will not only generate a standard way to quantify consistent individual differences (ICC) from time-to-event data, but also broaden the use of survival analysis outside of the typical implementation for survivorship studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"222 ","pages":"Article 123102"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143437957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring the effects of horizontal pathogen transmission on mortality and behaviour in a cooperatively breeding spider","authors":"Steven T. Cassidy ,&nbsp;Abigail Pope ,&nbsp;Nolan Missigman ,&nbsp;Kara J.M. Taylor ,&nbsp;Martha Haufiku ,&nbsp;Tresia Kavili ,&nbsp;Seth J. Eiseb ,&nbsp;Carl N. Keiser","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123113","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123113","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social interactions are a driving force behind disease outbreaks in animal societies. As groups become more complex and build permanent nests, they run the risk of introducing more routes of potential pathogen exposure. Eusocial societies have well-established ‘superorganism immunity’ that protects against disease. However, fewer studies have investigated social immunity in cooperative breeders, which may provide insight into the evolution of immunity as a form of collective behaviour during major evolutionary transitions in sociality. We exposed groups of social spiders (<em>Stegodyphus dumicola</em>) to a generalist entomopathogenic fungus (<em>Metarhizium robertsii</em>) using three modes of exposure: directly onto a groupmate, mechanically vectored by prey and nest exposure. We compared spider mortality between exposed groups and pathogen-free controls. We measured space use and colony fragmentation to test whether pathogen exposure route and disease severity affected spiders' aggregation and polydomy behaviour. We found that route of exposure greatly affected spider mortality, with direct exposure resulting in the most rapid mortality. Individuals from groups with a directly exposed spider were also more likely to be observed outside their nest compared to all other treatments. Exposure did not result in differences in colony fragmentation. These data demonstrate that the route of pathogen introduction not only affects the severity of disease outbreaks but can also alter behaviours relevant for social immunity. This study enhances our understanding of the transitional steps in social immunity among cooperative breeders that may lead to the evolution of superorganism immunity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"222 ","pages":"Article 123113"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143422574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Begging call mimicry and formation of host-specific lineages in the shining bronze-cuckoo, Chalcites lucidus","authors":"Alfredo Attisano ,&nbsp;Michael G. Anderson ,&nbsp;Naomi E. Langmore ,&nbsp;Roman Gula ,&nbsp;Jörn Theuerkauf","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123083","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123083","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Antagonistic coevolutionary interactions between avian brood parasites and their hosts can lead to selection for the discrimination of parasites by their host via visual or acoustic signals. Therefore, nestlings of some brood parasites may be under selection to evolve visual and vocal mimicry of host nestlings to avoid discrimination by host parents. Some brood parasites diversify into host-specific populations by mimicking visual features of the host offspring (either eggs or nestlings). However, whether a similar mechanism applies to the begging calls of their hosts remains unclear. In this study, we analysed the begging calls of three subspecies of the shining bronze-cuckoo, which present visual mimicry of three different host species (family Acanthizidae) that vary in their ability to discriminate parasite nestlings. We found that the begging calls of each cuckoo subspecies match the respective host more closely than any of the other cuckoo subspecies. Therefore, selection for coevolutionary diversification appears to overcome phylogenetic constraints on cuckoo begging call structure. The coevolutionary interactions in these parasite–host systems have promoted the selection for refined host mimicry by the cuckoo and the formation of geographically isolated evolutionary units across the range of the species.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123083"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143480432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Foraging response of bluegill Lepomis macrochirus to microplastics and subsequent impacts on swimming performance","authors":"Molly F. Cannon ,&nbsp;Preston C. Pennington ,&nbsp;Isabel Montaño ,&nbsp;Melissa S. Schindler ,&nbsp;Anthony I. Dell ,&nbsp;Michael J. Louison","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123079","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123079","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Microplastics are an emerging threat to aquatic and terrestrial species, and growing evidence suggests a suite of negative impacts, including reduced food consumption and direct physiological effects. Uptake of microplastics by animals can occur passively through accidental ingestion (i.e. fish swimming through contaminated water and taking microplastics into their buccal cavity/gills), or through active selection and consumption of particles. The rate of active plastic consumption for any animal depends on how well it can recognize and avoid eating the plastic. This likely has important impacts on the animal’s health and fitness, with subsequent impacts on reproductive fitness. In this study we explored the willingness of bluegill, <em>Lepomis macrochirus</em>, to directly consume microplastics (small, easily consumable pieces of high-density polyethylene bag films or polypropylene rope fibres) and whether this varied with continued exposure over time. Wild-caught bluegill were stocked in groups of three or six individuals in 37-litre aquaria and offered food (controls) or microplastics followed by food over a period of 4–6 days. Results showed that direct consumption of microplastics declined over time while foraging on food increased, indicating learned avoidance of microplastics. Foraging was impacted by plastic type, with bluegill more likely to forage on films than on fibres. Following group testing, each fish underwent an individual test for swimming endurance in a modified swim apparatus; however, no significant differences were found in swimming performance between treatments. Our results add to the growing literature revealing how animals, including fish, may actively consume microplastics and the potential effects of that exposure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123079"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143379248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vertebrate decision making leads to the interdependence of behaviour and wellbeing","authors":"Jarl Giske ,&nbsp;Sergey Budaev ,&nbsp;Sigrunn Eliassen ,&nbsp;Andrew D. Higginson ,&nbsp;Christian Jørgensen ,&nbsp;Marc Mangel","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123101","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123101","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Animal behaviour is commonly modelled by fitness-based optimization or individual-based simulation. Each has limitations: the premises for fitness-maximizing modelling are violated in most ecological and sociobiological settings while individual-based modelling generally does not include an evolutionary approach to behaviour. We propose a new approach focusing on the bodily mechanisms that vertebrates (and some other animals) use when making behavioural decisions. Our hypothesis is that decision making in vertebrates is a two-step process where emotion (a cognitive mechanism that for a while may become a state controlling the body and driving behaviour) is the common currency: (1) determining through competition among emotions the organism's current priority and (2) choosing the behaviour that maximizes imagined near-future emotional wellbeing, aided by episodic-like memory. Animals with subjective experience use awareness of their strongest emotional need to concentrate attention, which is a higher level of agency than the unconscious robustness mechanisms in all life forms. Furthermore, animals with imagination-based prediction maximize emotional wellbeing in their decision making. That is, evolution started out without a goal, but from it, animals that live for short-term wellbeing emerged. We show that wellbeing and other mechanisms of organismal robustness can be used in a new class of models that is broadly applicable to animals in natural and artificial settings. This modelling approach can make novel predictions about the links between wellbeing, behaviour and function.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123101"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143378672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social attention increases object memory in adult but not younger great apes","authors":"Marie Padberg ,&nbsp;Daniel Hanus ,&nbsp;Maleen Thiele ,&nbsp;Danyi Wang ,&nbsp;Lauren H. Howard ,&nbsp;Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann ,&nbsp;Luke Maurits ,&nbsp;Johanna Eckert ,&nbsp;Daniel B.M. Haun","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123081","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123081","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research across primate species showed that social models (e.g. conspecifics) enhance memory (social memory effect, SME). In this preregistered study, we examined the ontogeny of the SME and its cognitive mechanism in great apes from infancy to adulthood (3 months–47 years), and explored both its persistence after a delay and its interaction with attentional measures of arousal (heart rate, HR). Forty-two individuals from four nonhuman great ape species viewed videos of social (hand) and nonsocial (mechanical claw) models constructing a tower, which was subsequently presented next to a novel tower. After 2 days, we showed the familiarized tower again next to a novel tower. Looking longer at the novel tower was interpreted as processing and recognizing the familiar tower (novelty response, NR). Results showed that adults (only) demonstrated higher NR for the tower built by the hand compared to the tower built by the claw when tested immediately, but not after a 2-day delay. We propose that this memory effect may have been driven by enhanced attention towards the social model, as adults demonstrated decreased HR relative to baseline in the social condition and accelerated HR in the nonsocial condition. However, we found no such differentiation in NR and HR in the younger individuals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123081"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143265027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effects of fine-scale changes in resource access and social stability on the sociality of foraging flocks of wild birds","authors":"Camille A. Troisi ,&nbsp;Josh A. Firth ,&nbsp;Sam J. Crofts ,&nbsp;Gabrielle L. Davidson ,&nbsp;Michael S. Reichert ,&nbsp;John L. Quinn","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.123071","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.123071","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social structure arises from individual behaviours and can impact a wide variety of behavioural and ecological processes. Although changes in the physical and social environment shape sociality, how perturbations govern sociality at a fine spatial scale remains poorly understood in wild populations. By applying automated experimental treatments to radio frequency identification tracked wild great tits, <em>Parus major</em>, in a field experiment, we examined changes in individual social network metrics in response to manipulated changes in two factors: (1) the distribution of food resources; and (2) the stability of the composition of individuals that had access to the same feeders, a subtreatment that was applied during one of the resource treatment levels. Repeatability analyses revealed consistent differences among individuals in their social network metrics at feeders across the various treatments. As expected, the average flock size and social network metrics increased when the distribution of food changed from two single feeders spaced 50 m apart (dispersed) to one location with an array of five feeders 1 m apart (clustered). However, some social network metrics changed further when individuals were restricted to feeding from only one of the five clustered feeders, even though all five feeders remained active. We also show how experimentally imposed group membership stability can impact social network metrics. Most changes in social network metrics were maintained when the food distribution returned to the dispersed pattern with two feeders 50 m apart, although dyadic associations between individuals of known identity were largely maintained. Our results show that perturbations in access to resources and social group stability at a surprisingly fine spatial scale can change connections in social networks during foraging. Fine-scale effects can arise through assortative positioning within groups and can have important consequences for social processes at larger scales, yet are typically overlooked.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123071"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143480410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Foraging location preferences reflect memory interference associated with spatial learning tasks in a food-caching bird","authors":"Lauren M. Benedict ,&nbsp;Virginia K. Heinen ,&nbsp;Joseph F. Welklin ,&nbsp;Benjamin R. Sonnenberg ,&nbsp;Lauren E. Whitenack ,&nbsp;Eli S. Bridge ,&nbsp;Vladimir V. Pravosudov","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.123052","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.123052","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Strong memories interfere with learning new information through proactive interference, potentially contributing to a trade-off between retaining older memories and acquiring newer ones. Due to mixed evidence for such a trade-off, it is unclear to what extent proactive interference may impact fitness-related behaviours in wild populations. Here, we explored the effects of proactive interference on memory retention and acquisition in wild mountain chickadees, <em>Poecile gambeli</em>, by assessing foraging behaviour at feeder arrays after birds had completed a spatial learning and memory task and a subsequent reversal learning task and when all feeders provided food. Overall, post-testing foraging behaviour was consistent with predictions of proactive interference. Chickadees that learned the location of a food reward better in the first spatial learning and memory task later foraged more from the first task's rewarding location and less from the reversal task's rewarding location, compared to birds that performed worse. In contrast, chickadees that learned the new information better in the reversal learning task later foraged more from the reversal task's rewarding location and less from the initial memory task's rewarding location. These results suggest that interference from strong memories had a lasting effect on foraging preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123052"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143096752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investigating the use of odour and colour foraging cues by rosy-faced lovebirds using deep-learning based analysis","authors":"Winson King Wai Tsang ,&nbsp;Emily Shui Kei Poon ,&nbsp;Chris Newman ,&nbsp;Christina D. Buesching ,&nbsp;Simon Yung Wa Sin","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123085","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123085","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Olfaction and vision can play important roles in optimizing foraging decisions of birds, enabling them to maximize their net rate of energy intake while searching for, handling and consuming food. Parrots have been used extensively in avian cognition research, and some species use olfactory cues to find food. Here we used machine-learning analysis and pose estimation with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to elucidate the relative importance of visual and olfactory cues for informing foraging decisions in the rosy-faced lovebird, <em>Agapornis roseicollis</em>, as a nontypical model species. In a binary choice experiment, we used markerless body pose tracking to analyse bird response behaviours. Rosy-faced lovebirds quickly learnt to discriminate the feeder provisioned with food by forming an association with visual (red/green papers) but not olfactory (banana/almond odour) cues. When visual cues indicated the provisioned and empty feeders, feeder choice was more successful, hesitation time shorter and interest in the empty feeder significantly lower. Our findings reveal that lovebirds can rapidly learn novel visual cues but not olfactory cues, indicating that vision plays a more important role in their learning and foraging decisions than olfaction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"221 ","pages":"Article 123085"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143096753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}