#thegrackleproject — Public Fediverse posts

#Vogelarten: Erkundungsfreude & geringere Sesshaftigkeit treiben schnelle Ausbreitung in neue Gebiete voran. 🐦‍⬛ Zwei neue Studien @peercomjournal.bsky.social von einem intl. Team um Corina Logan, @dieterlukas.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy & Kelsey McCune. #TheGrackleProject www.mpg.de/25181118/081...

Erkundung neuer Gebiete und ge...

🪧 2 new articles from #TheGrackleProject!

🔍 Grackles who were #trained to be more #flexible were more #exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its #behavior accordingly

✈️ Grackles in an edge #population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing #dispersal behaviors

🗺️ These results suggest that flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into new areas

💪 They started as #RegisteredReports @ #PCIEcology @PeerCommunityIn years ago! After lots of hard work from many collaborators (including @DieterLukas) they are now at the #diamondOA @PeerCommunityJournal 🎉

📰 Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25179774/0811-evan-exploration-and-dispersal-150495-x
📎 Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.593 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.591

🪧 2 new articles from #TheGrackleProject!

🔍 Grackles who were #trained to be more #flexible were more #exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its #behavior accordingly

✈️ Grackles in an edge #population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing #dispersal behaviors

🗺️ These results suggest that flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into new areas

💪 They started as #RegisteredReports @ #PCIEcology @PeerCommunityIn years ago! After lots of hard work from many collaborators (including @DieterLukas) they are now at the #diamondOA @PeerCommunityJournal 🎉

📰 Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25179774/0811-evan-exploration-and-dispersal-150495-x
📎 Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.593 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.591

🪧 2 new articles from #TheGrackleProject!

🔍 Grackles who were #trained to be more #flexible were more #exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its #behavior accordingly

✈️ Grackles in an edge #population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing #dispersal behaviors

🗺️ These results suggest that flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into new areas

💪 They started as #RegisteredReports @ #PCIEcology @PeerCommunityIn years ago! After lots of hard work from many collaborators (including @DieterLukas) they are now at the #diamondOA @PeerCommunityJournal 🎉

📰 Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25179774/0811-evan-exploration-and-dispersal-150495-x
📎 Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.593 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.591

🪧 2 new articles from #TheGrackleProject!

🔍 Grackles who were #trained to be more #flexible were more #exploratory after the training than untrained grackles. This indicates that the more an individual investigates a novel object, the more it can learn and adapt its #behavior accordingly

✈️ Grackles in an edge #population disperse farther than those in a more central population. This suggests that the rapid geographic range expansion of great-tailed grackles is associated with individuals differentially expressing #dispersal behaviors

🗺️ These results suggest that flexibility, exploration, and dispersal are key traits involved in this species’ rapid expansion into new areas

💪 They started as #RegisteredReports @ #PCIEcology @PeerCommunityIn years ago! After lots of hard work from many collaborators (including @DieterLukas) they are now at the #diamondOA @PeerCommunityJournal 🎉

📰 Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25179774/0811-evan-exploration-and-dispersal-150495-x
📎 Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.593 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.591

Erfolgsrezept urbaner #Vogelarten: Flexibilität und Beharrlichkeit. Neue spannende Studien zu #Grackeln von einem intl. Forschungsteam um Corina Logan, @dieterlukas.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy & Kelsey McCune in @peercomjournal.bsky.social. #TheGrackleProject www.mpg.de/25003256/070...

Erfolgsrezept: Flexibilität un...

The growing body of research we have been conducting on #TheGrackleProject is showing that #behavioral #flexibility enables birds to #adapt to #human #modified #habitats 🌆 , but plays a smaller role in expanding into new #geographic areas 🗺️

Moving to new towns likely involves more #persistence because we previously found that grackles on the edge of their range in northern California had similar levels of average flexibility (though higher variance), but were more persistent than grackles nearer the center of their range in Arizona https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/

This is also supported by the fact that the preliminary data we were able to collect on persistence in boat-tailed grackles (who are not rapidly expanding their geographic range) showed that they are less persistent than great-tailed grackles, while having similar levels of flexibility
Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.573 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.582
Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

#Behavioral #flexibility is not the primary facilitator of a rapid #range expansion. Although we found high levels of flexibility in 2 successful urban bird species (great-tailed & boat-tailed grackles), only one (great) is rapidly expanding its range. This suggests flexibility alone doesn't drive rapid range expansions

#TheGrackleProject went to Florida to study boat-tailed grackle flexibility and compare it with the great-tailed grackles. These species look and behave so similarly, if they were right next to each other, I couldn’t tell them apart (except greats have yellow irises and these boats had brown irises). They are parking lot birds through & through! 🅿️

But in the aviaries, it becomes obvious really quickly that the great-tailed grackles are much more persistent - they will try and try to solve something, whereas a boat-tailed grackle often just sits on their perch 🐥, looks at the apparatus & decides not to even try

https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.582
https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

In the process of studying #behavioral #flexibility in great-tailed grackles on #TheGrackleProject, we discovered 🎉 a new measure of flexibility! The grackles that were more flexible in the reversal learning test also switched between eating different food types more often in the wild 🌮 🍿 🍪 🍒

This is such an exciting discovery because it is really difficult to bring birds into aviaries to measure their flexibility. Now we have the ability to measure their flexibility just by watching them in the wild!

This will make studying flexibility much more accessible to a wide range of researchers because, apart from needing to be able to tell the individuals apart, all that is needed is a pair of binoculars
Article: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.573
Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

🔥 Hot off the press from #TheGrackleProject!
🌇 When the city comes to you, be #flexible
When you go to the city, be #persistent

Great-tailed grackles who were #trained to be more flexible used a wider variety of foods 🍿 and #foraging techniques, but had similar #habitat use patterns and #social behavior as non-trained grackles.

Given that this species is rapidly expanding its geographic #range 🗺️ and shifting more toward #urban 🏙️ and #arid 🏜️ environments in recent years, our finding could suggest that foraging breadth (the number of different food types an individual eats) is a factor in #adapting to #Human-modifiedEnvironments

Article: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.573
Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

Blue just chose the correct feeder and I recorded his choice in my notes
#ScienceInAction #TheGrackleProject #ManyIndividuals

ALT: 2 feeders are sitting on the benches of a picnic table (dark gray on the left and light gray on the right). I am sitting in the foreground with a pencil and paper in one hand and a remote control that releases food from the feeder in the other hand. The grackle, Blue, landed at the light gray feeder, I pressed the remote to release the food, and then I wrote in my notes what his choice was

Orange is learning that he has to step on the cardboard and then the food will come out of the feeder
#TheGrackleProject #ManyIndividuals #ScienceInAction

ALT: Orange approaches the cardboard on which a feeder sits and I press the remote control (it makes a "boing" sound) to trigger the food to be released. Eventually, he will learn that he has to step on the cardboard to trigger the food, and then step off and then back on again to re-trigger the food

The grackle Orange is running after me so he can participate in the test! #TheGrackleProject #ManyIndividuals #ScienceInAction

ALT: The grackle, Orange, sees that I set up the habituation feeder behind the dumpster and he is running across the wooden planks past a FedEx truck to get to the feeder to participate in the test