Wild jackdaws respond to their partner's distress, but not with consolation

Individuals are expected to manage their social relationships to maximize fitness returns. For example, reports of some mammals and birds offering unsolicited affiliation to distressed social partners (commonly termed ‘consolation’) are argued to illustrate convergent evolution of prosocial traits across divergent taxa. However, most studies cannot discriminate between consolation and alternative explanations such as self-soothing. Crucially, no study that controls for key confounds has examined consolation in the wild, where individuals face more complex and dangerous environments than in captivity. Controlling for common confounds, we find that male jackdaws ( Corvus monedula ) respond to their mate's stress-states, but not with consolation. Instead, they tended to decrease affiliation and partner visit rate in both experimental and natural contexts. This is striking because jackdaws have long-term monogamous relationships with highly interdependent fitness outcomes, which is precisely where theory predicts consolation should occur. Our findings challenge common conceptions about where consolation should evolve, and chime with concerns that current theory may be influenced by anthropomorphic expectations of how social relationships should be managed. To further our understanding of the evolution of such traits, we highlight the need for our current predictive frameworks to incorporate the behavioural trade-offs inherent to life in the wild.

Task Aspects Triggering Observational Learning in Jackdaws (Corvus monedula)

Complex novel tasks are often used in animal cognition research to allow discrimination between various learning mechanisms. Successful performance relies on the capacity to identify informational cues from features in the environment. Additionally, observational learning is often considered more beneficial for survival than individual learning. Despite the importance of controlling task complexity, it can often be challenging to operationalize. This study investigated whether jackdaws, a highly social corvid species, can learn to drop stones inside a tube to release a reward after observing a trained conspecific. Additionally, it aimed to identify the underlying learning mechanisms and to detect the informational cues triggering learning. A research design was developed to highlight different aspects of the required action sequence. Experimental conditions included a conspecific model demonstrating the full sequence, parts of the sequence, consuming the reward without solving the task, and consuming the reward after the solution was demonstrated without a visible model. None of the 12 naïve jackdaws solved the task in pretests. Two subjects started solving in test sessions and they developed modified versions of the demonstrated action. Observing the full action sequence performed by a conspecific seemed to trigger learning. The majority of the subjects exhibited changes in their stone-oriented behavior, most likely due to stimulus and/or local enhancement. As predicted, jackdaws were influenced by conspecific model demonstrations when manipulating a complex novel foraging task. Factors contributing to the apparent task difficulty and directions for future studies are discussed within a tri-dimensional framework including the task, setup, and individuals.

Temporal dynamic of the phylogenetic diversity of the bird community of agricultural lands in Ukrainian steppe drylands

This study discussed the importance of the phylogenetic components in the structure of bird communities of anthropogenically transformed ecosystems. The investigation was conducted in the landscapes of the south and south-east of Ukraine in the nesting seasons 1988–2018. The bird community in the agricultural landscape was found to be presented by 10 species. The number of species was closely correlated with its phylogenetic analogue – Faith’s index. Both indices were stationary over time, as they do not show a statistically significant time trend. The two axes were extracted as a result of the DPCOA procedure and the permutation test showed their statistical significance. The axis 1 was the most sensitive to the opposite dynamics of the abundance of Coturnix coturnix and Burhinus oedicnemus on the one hand and Alauda arvensis and Melanocorypha calandra on the other. The axis 2 is the most sensitive to the opposite dynamics of Corvus monedula and Melanocorypha calandra on the one hand and Coturnix coturnix and Motacilla flava on the other. Based on phylogenetic diversity, the years can be clustered with the extraction of four relatively homogeneous phylogenetic structures of bird communities. The indicator of the initial period of dynamics (1988–1992) was Burhinus oedicnemus. Sowing or mechanical weeding may be considered as a major factor of nest destruction of Burhinus oedicnemus. The decreasing of the abundance of the trophic recourses because of agricultural activity may have caused the monotonous negative trend over time of the Burhinus oedicnemus populations. The period 1993–2003 was a transitional one, for which there were no clear indicators, as a characteristic feature of this period was the processes of bird community restructuring. The period 2004–2013 was characterized by the loss of Burhinus oedicnemus from the community and a sharp increase in the abundance of Corvus monedula. These species are distinguished by their phylogenetic specificity and are located on the periphery relative to the phylogenetic core of the community. There was growing importance in the community of such species as Alauda arvensis, Anthus campestris, and Melanocorypha calandra between 2014 and 2018. Our results also confirm the assumption that phylogenetic overdispersion is an important requirement for the stability of the bird community in anthropogenically transformed landscapes.

Behavioural plasticity and the transition to order in jackdaw flocks

Collective behaviour is typically thought to arise from individuals following fixed interaction rules. The possibility that interaction rules may change under different circumstances has thus only rarely been investigated. Here we show that local interactions in flocks of wild jackdaws (Corvus monedula) vary drastically in different contexts, leading to distinct group-level properties. Jackdaws interact with a fixed number of neighbours (topological interactions) when traveling to roosts, but coordinate with neighbours based on spatial distance (metric interactions) during collective anti-predator mobbing events. Consequently, mobbing flocks exhibit a dramatic transition from disordered aggregations to ordered motion as group density increases, unlike transit flocks where order is independent of density. The relationship between group density and group order during this transition agrees well with a generic self-propelled particle model. Our results demonstrate plasticity in local interaction rules and have implications for both natural and artificial collective systems.

Evidence for individual discrimination and numerical assessment in collective antipredator behaviour in wild jackdaws ( Corvus monedula )

Collective responses to threats occur throughout the animal kingdom but little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning them. Antipredator mobbing is one such response. Approaching a predator may be highly risky, but the individual risk declines and the likelihood of repelling the predator increases in larger mobbing groups. The ability to appraise the number of conspecifics involved in a mobbing event could therefore facilitate strategic decisions about whether to join. Mobs are commonly initiated by recruitment calls, which may provide valuable information to guide decision-making. We tested whether the number of wild jackdaws responding to recruitment calls was influenced by the number of callers. As predicted, playbacks simulating three or five callers tended to recruit more individuals than playbacks of one caller. Recruitment also substantially increased if recruits themselves produced calls. These results suggest that jackdaws use individual vocal discrimination to assess the number of conspecifics involved in initiating mobbing events, and use this information to guide their responses. Our results show support for the use of numerical assessment in antipredator mobbing responses and highlight the need for a greater understanding of the cognitive processes involved in collective behaviour.

Social learning about dangerous people by wild jackdaws

For animals that live alongside humans, people can present both an opportunity and a threat. Previous studies have shown that several species can learn to discriminate between individual people and assess risk based on prior experience. To avoid potentially costly encounters, it may also pay individuals to learn about dangerous people based on information from others. Social learning about anthropogenic threats is likely to be beneficial in habitats dominated by human activity, but experimental evidence is limited. Here, we tested whether wild jackdaws ( Corvus monedula ) use social learning to recognize dangerous people. Using a within-subjects design, we presented breeding jackdaws with an unfamiliar person near their nest, combined with conspecific alarm calls. Subjects that heard alarm calls showed a heightened fear response in subsequent encounters with the person compared to a control group, reducing their latency to return to the nest. This study provides important evidence that animals use social learning to assess the level of risk posed by individual humans.