Implementing a rapid geographic range expansion - the role of behavior changesuse asterix (*) to get italics

Logan CJ, McCune KB, LeGrande-Rolls C, Marfori Z, Hubbard J, Lukas DPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2023

<p>It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of species to rapidly expand their geographic range. Great-tailed grackles (<em>Quiscalus mexicanus</em>) are a social, polygamous species that is rapidly expanding its geographic range by settling in new areas and habitats. They are behaviorally flexible and highly associated with human-modified environments, eating a variety of human foods in addition to foraging on insects and on the ground for other natural food items. They offer an opportunity to assess the role of behavior change over the course of their expansion. We compared behavior in wild-caught grackles from two populations across their range (an older population in the middle of the northern expansion front: Tempe, Arizona, and a more recent population on the northern edge of the expansion front: Woodland, California) to investigate whether certain behaviors (flexibility, innovativeness, exploration, and persistence) have higher averages and variances in the newer or older population. We found that grackles in the edge population had a higher flexibility variance (measured by reversal learning) and a higher persistence average (they participated in a larger proportion of trials), and that there were no population differences in average levels of flexibility, innovativeness (number of loci solved on a multiaccess box), or exploration (latency to approach a novel environment). Our results elucidated that individuals differentially expressing a particular behavior in an edge population could facilitate the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles, and we found no support for the importance of several traits that were hypothesized to be involved in such an expansion. Our findings highlight the value of population studies and of breaking down cognitive concepts into direct measures of individual abilities to better understand how species might adapt to novel circumstances.</p>

https://doi.org/10.5063/F10C4T7TYou should fill this box only if you chose 'All or part of the results presented in this preprint are based on data'. URL must start with http:// or https://

https://doi.org/10.5063/F10C4T7TYou should fill this box only if you chose 'Scripts were used to obtain or analyze the results'. URL must start with http:// or https://

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Behavioral flexibility, innovativeness, exploration, persistence, grackle, cross population, animal cognition, animal behavior, comparative cognition

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Behaviour & Ethology, Preregistrations, Zoology

Caroline Marie Jeanne Yvonne Nieberding, Pizza Ka Yee Chow, Tim Parker No need for them to be recommenders of PCIEcology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

Nonee.g. John Doe [john@doe.com]

2023-04-12 11:00:42

Esther Sebastián González