Social learning of a foraging task in great tits: Population patterns and underlying mechanisms

Thesis

Certain bottlenose dolphin pods forage using sponges, while a subset of Japanese macaque troops wash sweet potatoes. These are just some examples of group-level patterns of behaviour that could have arisen by social learning. Understanding the scale at which social learning acts to result in such traditions can be informative of underlying mechanisms. In addition, studying how social learning can influence the occurrence and distribution of behaviour over space and time enables a better understanding of how selection acts on populations. Thus, in this thesis, I investigate the role of social learning on spatiotemporal foraging patterns and the underlying mechanisms in wild great tits (Parus major). To do this, I employed both field and captive experiments to examine learning at experimentally introduced foraging tasks. I found individual and spatial variation in coarse and fine-scale techniques used to solve a bidirectional control procedure task. Social learning of fine-scale solving behaviours was focused on location rather than actions, suggesting fine-scale local enhancement. I also found that social learning influences temporal behavioural patterns, with learning individuals benefiting from the improving skill levels of demonstrators. This however, was masked at a local scale by competition. Temporal changes in behaviour were influenced by potential 'habit forming', with individuals acting to increase their foraging efficiency of preferred techniques rather than adopting more efficient techniques. Finally, results from a captive open diffusion experiment using a two-action task, though inconclusive, supported fine-scale local enhancement in great tits when foraging. This thesis highlights the importance of examining the impact of social learning on behavioural patterns at different scales. It also emphasises the need to examine not only how social learning influences novel skill acquisition and the distribution of behaviour in populations, but also how it influences temporal changes in behaviours already within the repertoire of individuals.

Authors: Kam, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-w4vp4en24
• Type of award: MSc by Research
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Keywords: Great tit; Social learning
• Subjects: Behavioural ecology; Social learning