Foraging sparrows exhibit individual differences but not a syndrome when responding to multiple kinds of novelty

David E. Moldoff and David F. Westneat

Behavioral Ecology, 2017, vol. 28, issue 3, 732-743

Abstract: Lay Summary Organisms could treat sudden changes to their environment (novelty) either similarly or uniquely depending on context. We tested this idea in foraging house sparrows. Sparrows responded to several forms of novelty. Individuality existed in the speed to come to the food source and in initial responsiveness to a novel object, but not in the adjustment to objects as they became familiar or novel cues of food. Sparrows are highly flexible, which may explain their ability to coexist with humans.

Keywords: behavioral syndrome; domain generality; domain specificity; habituation; learning; neophobia; phenotypic plasticity; reaction norm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arx014 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:28:y:2017:i:3:p:732-743.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().