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 s...