PhD‐theses - Ethologische Gesellschaft

CONTEXT‐DEPENDENT LEARNING PERFORMANCE IN RELATION TO AVIAN PERSONALITIES
Mieke Titulaer
m.titulaer@nioo.knaw.nl
Research Update
Master thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Marc Naguib and Dr. Kees van Oers, Department of Animal
Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO‐KNAW), Heteren, the Netherlands
Adaptation to environmental changes is facilitated by good learning abilities. Individuals
differ in their learning abilities, but little is known on how such variation is linked to
consistent behavioural differences among individuals (personality traits). Great tits (Parus
major) differ consistently in their exploratory behaviour in a novel environment, and this
correlates with a range of behavioural traits. It thus can be used as proxy for personality.
Here we subjected birds to a dimensional shift learning paradigm to study the link between
learning and personality. The learning paradigm included several stages differing in
complexity. First, the birds were trained to find food under one of two colours or at one of
two locations, after which the previously unrewarded colour or location became rewarded
(reversal). Then, two new colours and locations were given (intra‐dimensional shift) and
finally, the rewarded dimension was changed from colour to location or vice versa (extra‐
dimensional shift). Previous studies have shown that fast exploring individuals are less
flexible than slow explorers. Therefore we expected slow explorers to perform better in the
reversal and extra‐dimensional shift, which are established measures of flexibility. The
results show that reversal learning was the most difficult stage and apparently it was the
only stage in which personality differences in performance were found, but in opposite
direction for males and females. Fast exploring males showed more flexible learning abilities
than slow males, whereas in females slow explorers outperforming fast explorers. The sex‐
specific relationship between exploratory behaviour and performance on the reversal task
shows that personality may have important consequences for the capacity of an animal to
adapt to the environment, depending on sex and context, with possible fitness implications
in the wild. These context‐dependent and sex‐specific personality effects are in line with
field studies and show the importance of experimental work for uncovering mechanisms of
evolutionary processes in the wild.
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