Data from: Urbanization and individual differences in exploration and plasticity

Urban environments impose novel challenges on animals and, as a result,
the behaviors of urban wildlife are changing. In particular, high
exploratory tendencies and an ability to gather more information from the
environment may facilitate adoption of novel ecological opportunities. As
of yet, very few studies have examined if urbanization predicts the way in
which animals explore novel environments, or the extent of
among-individual variation within habitats. Here, we assess exploration
and it’s temporal plasticity in black-capped chickadees (Poecile
atricapillus; N=169 individuals, 14 sites) caught along an urban gradient
to examine individual differences in exploration and changes in
exploration over time and assays under a reaction-norm framework. As
predicted, urban birds were significantly faster explorers in a novel
environment (contacted more features and moved more), however urbanization
did not predict individual differences in the change in exploration over
time. Exploration score was moderately repeatable; interestingly, urban
chickadees were more repeatable in their initial exploration behaviors,
but seemed less repeatable in how they explored over time between assays
in comparison to forest birds. Our results support the importance of high
exploratory tendencies for urban animals, and suggest, for the first time,
that individuals from urban and non-urban habitats differ in the amount of
among-individual variation in exploration, and thus urban individuals may
benefit from diverging more from one another in their behaviour. Future
work should examine the extent to which this variation in exploration and
plasticity of exploration behaviors represent differences in how
individuals gather information from their environment.

城市环境给动物带来了全新的生存挑战，因此城市野生动物的行为模式正发生改变。具体而言，探索倾向显著较高、且能从环境中获取更多信息的个体，或许更易于利用新兴的生态机遇。迄今为止，鲜有研究探讨城市化是否会影响动物探索陌生环境的模式，或是不同生境下的个体间变异程度。本研究以沿城市化梯度捕获的169只黑头山雀（Poecile atricapillus；N=169个个体，14个采样点）为研究对象，采用反应规范框架（reaction-norm framework）评估其探索行为及其时间可塑性，以探究探索行为的个体差异，以及随时间和重复实验的探索行为变化。正如预期，城市生境中的山雀在陌生环境中探索速度显著更快（接触的环境特征更多、移动范围更广），但城市化并未显著预测随时间变化的探索行为个体差异。探索得分具有中等程度的重复性；值得注意的是，与森林生境的山雀相比，城市山雀的初始探索行为重复性更高，但在不同重复实验间随时间变化的探索模式重复性则更低。本研究结果证实了高探索倾向对城市动物的重要性，并首次表明：城市与非城市生境的个体在探索行为的个体变异程度上存在差异，因此城市个体间行为的进一步分化或许能使其获益。未来研究应进一步探讨，探索行为的这种变异以及探索行为的可塑性，在多大程度上反映了个体从环境中获取信息的方式差异。