| 1. |
- Morinay, Jennifer, 1988-, et al.
(author)
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Behavioural traits modulate the use of heterospecific social information for nest site selection : experimental evidence from a wild bird population
- 2020
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In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : ROYAL SOC. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 287:1925
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The use of social information for making decisions is common but can be constrained by behavioural traits via, for example, the ability to gather information. Such constrained information use has been described in foraging habitat selection; yet it remains unexplored in the breeding habitat selection context, despite potentially strong fitness consequences. We experimentally tested whether three behavioural traits (aggressiveness, boldness and neophobia) affected the use of heterospecific social information for nest site selection in wild collared flycatchers Ficedula albicollis. Flycatchers have previously been found to copy or reject an artificial apparent preference of tits (their main competitors) for a nest site feature: they preferred nest-boxes with the same or a different feature, depending on tit early reproductive investment. Here, we confirmed this result and showed that shy individuals and less aggressive old males (i.e. 2 years old or older) copied tit apparent preference, while more aggressive old males rejected the tit preference. Aggressiveness and boldness may allow males to access more information sources or affect males' interactions with dominant tits when selecting a nest site. Our study highlights the links between variation in behaviours and social information use for breeding habitat selection and calls for further work to explore underlying mechanisms.
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| 2. |
- Morinay, Jennifer, 1988-, et al.
(author)
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Heterospecific song quality as social information for settlement decisions : an experimental approach in a wild bird
- 2020
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In: Animal Behaviour. - : ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 161, s. 103-113
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Assessing local habitat quality via social cues provided by conspecific or heterospecific individuals sharing the same needs is a widespread strategy of social information use for breeding habitat selection. However, gathering information about putative competitors may involve agonistic costs. The use of social cues reflecting local habitat quality acquired from a distance, such as acoustic cues, could therefore be favoured. Bird songs are conspicuous signals commonly assumed to reliably reflect producer quality, and thereby local site quality. Birds of various species have been shown to be attracted to breeding sites by conspecific and heterospecific songs, and to use conspecific song features as information on producer (and by extension habitat) quality. Whether they can do the same with heterospecific song features, and whether this depends on the individual's own phenotype and especially its competitive ability, remains unknown. We used a playback experiment in a wild population of collared flycatchers, Ficedula albicollis, a species known to eavesdrop on the presence and performance of dominant great tits, Parus major. We tested whether flycatchers, whose aggressiveness was experimentally assessed, preferred to settle near playback of a high-quality great tit song (i.e. song with large repertoire size, long strophes, high song rate), a low-quality great tit song or a chaffinch song (control). Among old females, aggressive ones preferred to settle near playback of high-quality tit song and avoided playback of low-quality tit song, while less aggressive females preferred to settle near playback of low-quality tit song. Male personality or age did not influence settlement decisions. This shows that collared flycatcher females use great tit song quality features as information for settlement decisions, although this depended on their own competitive ability and/or previous experience with great tit songs. Our study therefore further illustrates the complex condition-dependent use of heterospecific social information for breeding habitat selection.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Morinay, Jennifer, 1988-, et al.
(author)
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No evidence for behavioural syndrome and genetic basis for three personality traits in a wild bird population
- 2019
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In: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 153, s. 69-82
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Personality traits and their correlations have been shown to be linked with life history strategies and fitness in various species. Among-individual correlations (i.e. behavioural syndromes) between personality traits can affect the evolutionary responses of these traits to environmental variation. Understanding the genetic and ecological determinants of personality traits and their interactions as behavioural syndromes in the wild is thus needed to shed light on the mechanisms shaping their evolution. Partitioning the observed (co)variance in these traits, however, requires large numbers of repeated behavioural measures on many individuals of known relatedness level. In the absence of such data, it is thus often assumed that phenotypic (co)variances inform about (i) underlying among-individual (co)variances (i.e. ignoring within-individual (co)variances) and (2) underlying genetic (co) variances. We tested these assumptions using three personality traits collected during 3 years on a long-term monitored breeding population of collared flycatchers, Ficedula albicollis. We partitioned the observed phenotypic (co)variance of aggressiveness, boldness and neophobia into genetic, permanent environment and parental components, and we estimated the repeatability, and heritability of these traits and their among-individual correlations. All three traits were repeatable between years (at least on the latent scale) but none were heritable. Permanent environment effects explained 15% of the phenotypic variance in aggressiveness, and parental effects explained 25% of the phenotypic variance in neophobia, in line with previous studies in wild populations. The three traits showed phenotypic correlations but no among-individual correlations and no additive genetic covariance. Thus, our results did not support the assumptions that phenotypic covariance reflects behavioural syndromes and genetic covariance. We discuss the reasons for the absence of heritability and among-individual and genetic covariance between these three personality traits in light of the possible selective pressures acting on this population.
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| 5. |
- Morinay, Jennifer, 1988-
(author)
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Sources of variability in heterospecific social information use for breeding habitat selection : Role of genetics and personality in collared flycatchers
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- All their life, individuals have to make decisions that may strongly affect their fitness. To optimize their decisions, they can use personally acquired information but also information obtained from observing other individuals (“social information”). The propensity to gather and use social information and the information meaning might depend on both individual and environmental factors. Studying what drives within- and between-individual differences in social information use should help us understand the evolutionary potential of this supposedly adaptive behaviour. The aim of my PhD was to empirically investigate sources of variability in heterospecific social information use for breeding habitat selection. I worked on a natural population of collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis, Gotland Island, Sweden), a passerine species shown to cue on the presence, density, reproductive investment and nest site preference of dominant titmice for settlement decisions. Using both long term and experimental data, I showed that the use of heterospecific social information, measured as the probability to copy tit nest preference, is not heritable but depends on male age and aggressiveness and on tit apparent breeding investment at the time of flycatcher settlement. Using a playback experiment, I also showed that female flycatchers can fine-tune nest site choice according to (i) song features supposedly reflecting great tit (Parus major) quality and (ii) their own aggressiveness level. This thesis highlights the importance of personality in the use of heterospecific social information for breeding site selection in this population, and broadens the traditionally known sources of heterospecific information to fine song characteristics reflecting heterospecifics’ quality. To fully understand the evolutionary mechanisms and consequences of heterospecific social information use, genetically based plasticity and fitness consequences remain to be explored.
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| 6. |
- Morinay, Jennifer, 1988-, et al.
(author)
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The Role of Cognition in Social Information Use for Breeding Site Selection : Experimental Evidence in a Wild Passerine Population
- 2020
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In: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. - : FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. - 2296-701X. ; 8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In spatio-temporally variable environments, individuals are known to use information for making optimal decisions regarding where and when to breed. Optimal decision making can be complex when relying on multiple information sources with varying levels of reliability and accessibility. To deal with such complexity, different cognitive abilities such as learning and memory might enable individuals to optimally process and use these information sources. Yet, the link between information use and cognitive ability remains unexplored in natural populations. We investigated whether learning performance on a problem-solving task was related to the use of an experimentally manipulated source of social information for nest site selection in wild collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis). Collared flycatchers are known to use heterospecific information from their main competitors, the great tits (Parus major). Here, we created a local apparent preference by tits for an artificial nest site feature (a geometric symbol attached to nest boxes occupied by tits) and recorded whether flycatcher pairs chose to settle in nest boxes displaying the same feature as tits (i.e., copied tit apparent preference). Using a problem-solving task requiring opening a door temporarily blocking the nest box entrance, we then measured flycatchers' learning performance during nestling rearing as the number of entrances required to solve the task and enter the nest box twice in a row below a given efficiency threshold. We found that the probability to copy tit preference decreased with decreasing learning performance in females, particularly yearling ones: fast learning females copied tit preference, while slow learning ones rejected it. Male learning performance did not affect copying behavior. Our results showed that learning performance might play an important role in the ability to optimally use information for nest site selection in females: both fast and slow learning females could process this heterospecific information source but used it differently. This could partly explain the link between cognitive abilities and reproductive success reported in previous studies. Whether cognitive abilities may modulate condition-dependent costs of using different information remains to be explored.
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| 8. |
- Norte, Ana Cláudia, et al.
(author)
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Host dispersal shapes the population structure of a tick-borne bacterial pathogen
- 2020
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In: Molecular Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0962-1083 .- 1365-294X. ; 29:3, s. 485-501
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Birds are hosts for several zoonotic pathogens. Because of their high mobility, especially of longdistance migrants, birds can disperse these pathogens, affecting their distribution and phylogeography. We focused on Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, which includes the causative agents of Lyme borreliosis, as an example for tick-borne pathogens, to address the role of birds as propagation hosts of zoonotic agents at a large geographical scale. We collected ticks from passerine birds in 11 European countries. B. burgdorferi s.l. prevalence in Ixodes spp. was 37% and increased with latitude. The fieldfare Turdus pilaris and the blackbird T. merula carried ticks with the highest Borrelia prevalence (92 and 58%, respectively), whereas robin Erithacus rubecula ticks were the least infected (3.8%). Borrelia garinii was the most prevalent genospecies (61%), followed by B. valaisiana (24%), B. afzelii (9%), B. turdi (5%) and B. lusitaniae (0.5%). A novel Borrelia genospecies “Candidatus Borrelia aligera” was also detected. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis of B. garinii isolates together with the global collection of B. garinii genotypes obtained from the Borrelia MLST public database revealed that: (a) there was little overlap among genotypes from different continents, (b) there was no geographical structuring within Europe, and (c) there was no evident association pattern detectable among B. garinii genotypes from ticks feeding on birds, questing ticks or human isolates. These findings strengthen the hypothesis that the population structure and evolutionary biology of tick-borne pathogens are shaped by their host associations and the movement patterns of these hosts.
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| 9. |
- Tamin, Thibault, et al.
(author)
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Behavioural syndrome between boldness and aggressiveness and link with reproductive success in a wild bird population
- 2023
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In: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 197, s. 27-41
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Boldness, defined as the behavioural response of individuals when facing a risky situation, is a major personality trait and often phenotypically correlates with other behavioural traits, in particular aggres-siveness, exploration behaviour and neophobia. Yet, whether such links result from among-individual correlations, i.e. form behavioural syndromes sensu stricto, is often ignored and whether such syn-dromes may yield individual fitness benefits, and thus be selected for, remains poorly explored. We measured boldness as the nest defence behaviour against a dummy nest predator in a natural population of a small passerine bird, the collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis, and investigated the existence of a behavioural syndrome between boldness and two other behavioural traits, aggressiveness (measured as the agonistic response to competitors) and neophobia (measured as the behavioural response to a novel object in a known environment). Then we assessed the links between this potential syndrome and reproductive success, measured as fledging and recruitment success. Boldness score differed between the sexes and depended on whether the partner was present during the test. Nevertheless, it was repeatable, showing that boldness can be considered as a personality trait in our population. We found a positive among-individual correlation between boldness and aggressiveness, showing the existence of a behav-ioural syndrome between both personality traits. This syndrome was related to reproductive success: the number of fledged young (but not recruitment probability) increased with one integrative value of the boldness-aggressiveness syndrome. Conversely, boldness score was not correlated with neophobia. Our results thus clearly reveal a behavioural syndrome between boldness and aggressiveness with possible consequences for reproductive success in the study population, and therefore raise the question of the evolutionary implications of such a behavioural syndrome.
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| 10. |
- Tolvanen, Jere, et al.
(author)
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Quantitative genetics of the use of conspecific and heterospecific social cues for breeding site choice
- 2020
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In: Evolution. - : WILEY. - 0014-3820 .- 1558-5646. ; 74:10, s. 2332-2347
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Social information use for decision-making is common and affects ecological and evolutionary processes, including social aggregation, species coexistence, and cultural evolution. Despite increasing ecological knowledge on social information use, very little is known about its genetic basis and therefore its evolutionary potential. Genetic variation in a trait affecting an individual's social and nonsocial environment may have important implications for population dynamics, interspecific interactions, and, for expression of other, environmentally plastic traits. We estimated repeatability, additive genetic variance, and heritability of the use of conspecific and heterospecific social cues (abundance and breeding success) for breeding site choice in a population of wild collared flycatchersFicedula albicollis. Repeatability was found for two social cues: previous year conspecific breeding success and previous year heterospecific abundance. Yet, additive genetic variances for these two social cues, and thus heritabilities, were low. This suggests that most of the phenotypic variation in the use of social cues and resulting conspecific and heterospecific social environment experienced by individuals in this population stems from phenotypic plasticity. Given the important role of social information use on ecological and evolutionary processes, more studies on genetic versus environmental determinism of social information use are needed.
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