Data from: Captive birds exhibit greater foraging efficiency and vigilance after anti-predator training

Rearing animals in captivity for conservation translocation is a complex
undertaking that demands interdisciplinary management tactics. The
maladapted behaviors that captive animals can develop create unique
problems for wildlife managers seeking to release these animals into the
wild. Often, released captive animals show decreased survival due to
predation and their inability to display appropriate anti-predator,
vigilance, and risk-analysis behaviors. Additionally, released animals may
have poor foraging skills, further increasing their vulnerability to
predation. Often conservation translocation programs use anti-predator
training to ameliorate these maladapted behaviors before release but find
mixed results in behavioral responses. The behavioral scope of analyzing
the effect of anti-predator trainings is frequently narrow; the effect of
this training on an animal’s risk-analysis competency, or ability to
assess the predation risk of a foraging patch and subsequently adjust its
behavior, remains unstudied. Using a captive reared passerine species, the
American robin (Turdus migratorius) (46 individuals), we applied an
experimental giving up density test (GUD) to analyze the effect of
anti-predator training on the robins’ vigilance/risk-analysis behaviors,
patch choice, and the GUD of food left behind after one foraging session.
Robins moved and foraged freely between three foraging patches of
differing predation risk before and after a hawk silhouette was presented
for one minute. Results indicate that after anti-predator training, robins
displayed increased vigilance across most foraging patches and better
foraging efficiency (higher vigilance and latency to forage with
simultaneous lower GUD) in the safest patch. These results can have
positive survival implications post-release, however, more research on
this training is needed because anti-predator training has the potential
to elicit indiscriminate increased vigilance to the detriment of foraging
gains. Further research is required to standardize GUD's application
in translocation programs with multigenerational captive-bred animals to
fully comprehend its effectiveness in identifying and correcting
maladaptive behaviors. GUD tests combined with behavioral analysis should
be used by conservation translocation managers to examine the need for
anti-predator and foraging trainings, the effects of trainings, and a
group’s suitability for release.