Kelsey B. McCune, Cody Ross, Melissa Folsom, Luisa Bergeron, Corina LoganPlease 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"
Great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) are rapidly expanding their geographic range (Wehtje 2003). Range expansion could be facilitated by consistent behavioural differences between individuals on the range edge and those in other parts of the range (Duckworth and Badyaev 2007; Lindström et al. 2013). Movement behaviors in particular are thought to be important for expanding and invasive species (Bubb, Thom, and Lucas 2006). There is evidence for a relationship between individual exploratory traits and dispersal (the permanent movement an individual makes from its birth site to the place where it reproduces; Greenwood and Harvey 1982), but it is still unknown whether individual differences in exploration relate to adult daily movement patterns within the home range (“space use”). Evidence suggests that daily space use behavior can vary consistently among individuals (Hertel et al. 2020), but no studies have examined the relationship between space use behavior and measures of exploration, or space use behavior in different populations along an expanding range. Here we will study grackles from 3 populations that span the extent of the current range - Central America (their original range), Arizona (middle of the northern expanding edge), and northern California (near the northern edge of their range). We will test whether performance on an exploration task in captivity relates to subsequent space use behavior in the wild measured using home range size, the autocorrelation of step length (distance between two sequential observations) and turning angle for each individual over time (Pacheco-Cobos et al. 2019), and the repeatability of each individual’s occurrence in particular geographic locations. Results will inform whether individual differences in space use behavior are associated with consistent individual differences in exploration, and whether daily space use patterns differ in populations at different points on an expanding range. If space use behavior correlates with measures of exploration, then space use data could be used to inform conservation management strategies (e.g. identify which individuals are likely to remain in new or restored habitat after a translocation (May, Page, and Fleming 2016)) in species where it is not logistically feasible to a priori measure exploration in captivity. If daily space use patterns differ in populations at different locations on the expanding range, then future studies could investigate whether space use and exploration are coupled with other traits such as long-distance natal dispersal to form an “invasion syndrome” (Chapple, Simmonds, and Wong 2012).
Individual differences, space use, habitat preferences, exploration
Behaviour & Ethology, Biological invasions, Conservation biology, Habitat selection, Phenotypic plasticity, Preregistrations, Spatial ecology, Metacommunities & Metapopulations
