scholarly journals Can video playback provide social information for foraging blue tits?

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3062 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liisa Hämäläinen ◽  
Hannah M. Rowland ◽  
Johanna Mappes ◽  
Rose Thorogood
Keyword(s):  
Social Information ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Prey Type ◽  
Video Playback ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Social Stimuli ◽  
Video Screen ◽  
Foraging Decisions ◽  
Empty Cage ◽  
Blue Tits

Video playback is becoming a common method for manipulating social stimuli in experiments. Parid tits are one of the most commonly studied groups of wild birds. However, it is not yet clear if tits respond to video playback or how their behavioural responses should be measured. Behaviours may also differ depending on what they observe demonstrators encountering. Here we present blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) videos of demonstrators discovering palatable or aversive prey (injected with bitter-tasting Bitrex) from coloured feeding cups. First we quantify variation in demonstrators’ responses to the prey items: aversive prey provoked high rates of beak wiping and head shaking. We then show that focal blue tits respond differently to the presence of a demonstrator on a video screen, depending on whether demonstrators discover palatable or aversive prey. Focal birds faced the video screen more during aversive prey presentations, and made more head turns. Regardless of prey type, focal birds also hopped more frequently during the presence of a demonstrator (compared to a control video of a different coloured feeding cup in an empty cage). Finally, we tested if demonstrators’ behaviour affected focal birds’ food preferences by giving individuals a choice to forage from the same cup as a demonstrator, or from the cup in the control video. We found that only half of the individuals made their choice in accordance to social information in the videos, i.e., their foraging choices were not different from random. Individuals that chose in accordance with a demonstrator, however, made their choice faster than individuals that chose an alternative cup. Together, our results suggest that video playback can provide social cues to blue tits, but individuals vary greatly in how they use this information in their foraging decisions.

scholarly journals The effect of social information from live demonstrators compared to video playback on blue tit foraging decisions

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liisa Hämäläinen ◽  
Hannah M. Rowland ◽  
Johanna Mappes ◽  
Rose Thorogood
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Video Playback ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Blue Tit ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Foraging Decisions ◽  
Foraging Task ◽  
Blue Tits ◽  
Live Bird

Video playback provides a promising method to study social interactions, and the number of video playback experiments has been growing in recent years. Using videos has advantages over live individuals as it increases the repeatability of demonstrations, and enables researchers to manipulate the features of the presented stimulus. How observers respond to video playback might, however, differ among species, and the efficacy of video playback should be validated by investigating if individuals’ responses to videos are comparable to their responses to live demonstrators. Here, we use a novel foraging task to compare blue tits’ (Cyanistes caeruleus) responses to social information from a live conspecific vs video playback. Birds first received social information about the location of food, and were then presented with a three-choice foraging task where they could search for food from locations marked with different symbols (cross, square, plain white). Two control groups saw only a foraging tray with similar symbols but no information about the location of food. We predicted that socially educated birds would prefer the same location where a demonstrator had foraged, but we found no evidence that birds copied a demonstrator’s choice, regardless of how social information was presented. Social information, however, had an influence on blue tits’ foraging choices, as socially educated birds seemed to form a stronger preference for a square symbol (against two other options, cross and plain white) than the control birds. Our results suggest that blue tits respond to video playback of a conspecific similarly as to a live bird, but how they use this social information in their foraging decisions, remains unclear.

scholarly journals Personality in Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) and its Effect on Their Breeding Success

Ethology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 122 (8) ◽  
pp. 695-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Colchester ◽  
Nancy M. Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Breeding Success ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Blue Tits

scholarly journals Effect of tree logging on reproductive performance in Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus)

2016 ◽  
Vol 158 (1) ◽  
pp. 339-344
Author(s):  
Seyed Mehdi Amininasab ◽  
Charles C. Y. Xu ◽  
Sjouke A. Kingma ◽  
Jan Komdeur
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Performance ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Blue Tits

scholarly journals Integrated behavioural and stable isotope data reveal altered diet linked to low breeding success in urban-dwelling blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus)

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Pollock ◽  
Pablo Capilla-Lasheras ◽  
Rona A. R. McGill ◽  
Barbara Helm ◽  
Davide M. Dominoni
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Breeding Success ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Isotope Data ◽  
Blue Tits ◽  
Stable Isotope Data

Does the Threat of European Pine Marten (Martes Martes) Predation Influence the Height of Nests Built by Blue Tits(Cyanistes Caeruleus)and Great Tits (Parus Major)?

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Kaliński ◽  
Jarosław Wawrzyniak ◽  
Mirosława Bańbura ◽  
Joanna Skwarska ◽  
Piotr Zieliński ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parus Major ◽  
Martes Martes ◽  
Pine Marten ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Blue Tits ◽  
European Pine Marten

scholarly journals Chromaticity in the UV/blue range facilitates the search for achromatically background-matching prey in birds

2008 ◽  
Vol 364 (1516) ◽  
pp. 511-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Stobbe ◽  
Marina Dimitrova ◽  
Sami Merilaita ◽  
H. Martin Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Search Task ◽  
Cyanistes Caeruleus ◽  
Chromatic Contrast ◽  
Background Matching ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Chromatic Cues ◽  
Blue Range ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Chromatic Properties ◽  
Blue Tits

A large variety of predatory species rely on their visual abilities to locate their prey. However, the search for prey may be hampered by prey camouflage. The most prominent example of concealing coloration is background-matching prey coloration characterized by a strong visual resemblance of prey to the background. Even though this principle of camouflage was recognized to efficiently work in predator avoidance a long time ago, the underlying mechanisms are not very well known. In this study, we assessed whether blue tits ( Cyanistes caeruleus ) use chromatic cues in the search for prey. We used two prey types that were achromatically identical but differed in chromatic properties in the UV/blue range and presented them on two achromatically identical backgrounds. The backgrounds had either the same chromatic properties as the prey items (matching combination) or differed in their chromatic properties (mismatching combination). Our results show that birds use chromatic cues in the search for mismatching prey, whereupon chromatic contrast leads to a ‘pop-out’ of the prey item from the background. When prey was presented on a matching background, search times were significantly higher. Interestingly, search for more chromatic prey on the matching background was easier than search for less chromatic prey on the matching background. Our results indicate that birds use both achromatic and chromatic cues when searching for prey, and that the combination of both cues might be helpful in the search task.

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