Individual difference in social learning in a granivorous passerine bird, and its independence from personality

Abstract

Animals use learning to adaptively adjust their behaviour to conditions taking advantage of previous experiences. While individual learning is advantageous, it includes risks and costs that can be overcome by learning from others. Despite its relevance, the ability to learn from observing others behaviour was tested in only a limited number of birds species, of which only a few feeds mainly on plants. There is still much to be learn what kind of information birds are interested and capable of gathering from conspecifics in the foraging context. We set out to test the social learning skills of a granivorous gregarious species of cardueline finch, the Serin (Serinus serinus), because they likely follow conspecifics cues to forage. We used an observer-demonstrator paradigm where observers were given the opportunity to learn to reach hidden food from observation of demonstrators that were previously trained to perform the task. Almost half of the birds tested were capable of learning (40%) from a conspecific in a colour-food association experiment, and learners were able to remember the association after fifteen days. Also, almost half of the birds tested for this revealed to be capable of reversal learning. The ability to learn was not influenced by sex or age, of both demonstrators and learners, but learners had longer wings than non-learners. We investigated whether personality could explain the differences in learning ability of these birds. We assessed individual boldness and sociability through the novel object test and mirror personality tests respectively. Although we found repeatability those personality traits we found no association with social learning ability.