%0 Journal Article
%A Logan, Corina J.
%+ External Organizations
%T How far will a behaviourally flexible invasive bird go to innovate? : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-C6A7-1
%R 10.1098/rsos.160247
%7 2016-06-01
%D 2016
%8 01.06.2016
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X Behavioural flexibility is considered a key factor in the ability to adapt to changing environments. A traditional way of characterizing behavioural flexibility is to determine whether individuals invent solutions to novel problems, termed innovativeness. Great-tailed grackles are behaviourally flexible in that they can change their preferences when a task changes using existing behaviours; however, it is unknown how far they will go to invent solutions to novel problems. To begin to answer this question, I gave grackles two novel tests that a variety of other species can perform: stick tool use and string pulling. No grackle used a stick to access out-of-reach food, even after seeing a human demonstrate the solution. No grackle spontaneously pulled a vertically oriented string, but one did pull a horizontally oriented string twice. Additionally, a third novel test was previously conducted on these individuals and it was found that no grackle spontaneously dropped stones down a platform apparatus to release food, but six out of eight did become proficient after training. These results support the idea that behavioural flexibility is a multi-faceted trait because grackles are flexible, but not particularly innovative. This contradicts the idea that behavioural flexibility and innovativeness are interchangeable terms.
%J Royal Society Open Science
%V 3
%N 6
%] 160247
%U https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/view/doi:10.5063/F13B5XBC