Flexibility training does not increase behavioral diversity of Florida scrub-jays

Kelsey McCune, Sahas Barve

Human modifications of environments are increasing, causing global changes that other species must adjust to or suffer from. Behavioral flexibility (hereafter ‘flexibility’) could be key to coping with rapid change. Behavioral research can contribute to conservation by determining which behaviors can predict the ability to adjust to human modified environments and whether these can be manipulated. Most research that seeks to change animal behavior to facilitate conservation primarily focuses on one specific behavior to address one potential threat (e.g., response to a novel predator). However, training a domain general cognitive ability, such as flexibility, has the potential to change a whole suite of behaviors, which could have a larger impact on adjusting to human modified environments. This study asked whether flexibility can be increased by experimentally increasing environmental heterogeneity and whether such an increase helped species succeed in human modified environments. We aimed to 1) conduct flexibility interventions in disturbance-resilient species that are successful in human modified environments (California scrub-jays or blue jays) to understand how flexibility relates to success; and 2) implement these interventions in a disturbance-sensitive species (Florida scrub-jays) to determine whether flexibility as a generalizable cognitive ability can be trained and whether such training improves success in human-modified environments. Due to funding and time constraints, we were only able to conduct this research in Florida scrub-jays from two sites: fire-maintained, unfragmented habitat at Archbold Biological Station (“natural”) and suburban neighborhoods. We found no difference in behavioral flexibility before the intervention between jays in the natural or suburban sites. We were then able to successfully increase behavioral flexibility of wild jays through serial reversal learning, but we found no effect of this intervention on foraging or habitat use behaviors. Because we were not able to test successful species, we instead conducted an unregistered analysis comparing foraging and habitat use behavior between suburban and natural site Florida scrub-jays. Suburban jays used a greater variety of habitats than Archbold jays but there was no difference in foraging behavior. This research demonstrates that behavioral flexibility may not relate to adaptation to environmental change in this species, but some jays are able to persist in human modified environments and use the greater diversity of microhabitats present there. To better understand the role of behavior in the ability of Florida scrub-jays to adapt to environmental change, future work should evaluate the variation in other relevant traits like boldness, exploration and movement behavior.