Студопедия

Главная страница Случайная страница

Разделы сайта

АвтомобилиАстрономияБиологияГеографияДом и садДругие языкиДругоеИнформатикаИсторияКультураЛитератураЛогикаМатематикаМедицинаМеталлургияМеханикаОбразованиеОхрана трудаПедагогикаПолитикаПравоПсихологияРелигияРиторикаСоциологияСпортСтроительствоТехнологияТуризмФизикаФилософияФинансыХимияЧерчениеЭкологияЭкономикаЭлектроника






How it is to be an innovator






 

As we have already seen from the analysis of examples of innovative behaviour, the main body of data concerns the use of new food or application of new feeding techniques. Some authors consider the frequency of innovative behaviours, for a given taxonomic group, a useful indicator of its behavioural plasticity and its tendency to use novel means to solve environmental problems (Wyles et al., 1983; Lefebvre et al., 1997). Lefebvre et al. (1997) collected 322 foraging innovations in avian species from nine British and North American ornithological journals and analysed them in connection with measures of relative forebrain size. Innovations were documented from field studies and included such examples as, for Herring gull, catching small rabbits and killing them by dropping on rocks (Young, 1987, referred in: Lefebvre et al., 1997), or, for House sparrow, systematic searching of car radiator grills for insects (Simmons, 1984, referred in: Lefebvre et al., 1997). The authors found that relative forebrain size in different species was related to innovation frequency in the two zones, the British Isles and North America. It seems that at a taxonomic level of innovative behaviour demands at least relevant brains.

What about characteristic features of innovators at the individual level? What individual dispositions required for becoming innovative? Only little is yet known yet about the starting conditions of innovations. For example, in a study with guppies, Poecilia reticulata, in which fishes had to quickly make a choice between holes in a partition of an aquarium, Laland and Reader (1999) found that females were more likely to innovate than males, smaller fish more likely than larger fish and food-deprived fish more likely than non-deprived. However, apart form these differences related to sex, size and motivation they found that individuals who repeatedly innovated in the past did so again with a higher probability than past non-innovators. Thus some individuals in guppies seem to express “personality” differences in their tendency to innovate.

The expression of individual behavioural and physiological phenotypes or “ coping styles ” is defined as the way to cope behaviourally and physiologically with environmental and social challenges, irrespective of life history state, sex or motivational state. The existence of different coping styles could be shown for various animal species including humans (Broom, 1996, 2001; Koolhaas et al., 1999). In mice and rats, for example, aggressive individuals (“proactive copers”) entrained more rigid routines, spent less time exploring novel environments and were less alert to changing stimuli in known environments than less aggressive individuals (“reactive copers”). Similar patterns were found in great tits, Parus major

(Verbeek et al., 1996), domestic pigs, Sus scrofa domestica (Hessing et al., 1993), and cichlid fish, Steatocranus casuarius (Budaev et al., 1999). In ants scouting individuals that can first solve complex searching problems and usually attract foragers to novel objects, have smaller size, more diverse behavioural repertoire, and they are much more agile than other members of their colony (Reznikova and Ryabko, 1994; Reznikova and Novgorodova, 1998).

Experimenters at Konrad-Lorenz Research Station in Grunau had investigated the spread of the ability to trigger a food dispenser in a free-living, semi-tame flock of greylag geese, Anser anser, for several years (Fritz et al., 2000). These birds live in affiliative social units of pairs, families or sibling groups (Lorenz, 1979), and their members scrounge without interference. Usually one or two individual within such groups operated the food dispenser whereas the others exclusively scrounged. Pfeffer et al. (2002) investigated hormonal and behavioural correlates with the individual’s ability to perform operant tasks in hand-raised greylag goslings, Anser anser. Results suggest that becoming an innovator may be contingent upon individual coping styles. A tendency was revealed that males are more successful in coping with new tasks whereas females are biased toward learning by means of stimulus enhancement. Individuals that displayed elements of innovative behaviour possess higher level of corticosterone than conservative geese.

These, yet limited, data enable us to suggest that predisposition to innovative behaviour is based on some definite genetic features. In changeable environment wide spectrum of adaptations is tested for defects and this includes behavioural adaptations. As McGrew (1992) has noted, in many situations when researchers fixed innovations within populations, they could be predicted basing on essential change in environment such as shortage in food, forced migrations and so on. Under such circumstances new customs “invented” by few innovators can be more useful and adequate than species specific stereotypes that had been valid before. However, this does not mean that members of community will readily copy the novel life style. Usually animals observe odd behaviour of their conspecific curiously but keep aloof. Do innovators try to spread new behavioural pattern, in other words, can animal teach each others?

 






© 2023 :: MyLektsii.ru :: Мои Лекции
Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав.
Копирование текстов разрешено только с указанием индексируемой ссылки на источник.