Meeting Abstract
Traits such as response to novelty, exploratory disposition, innovativeness, and other behaviors have impacted the success of range expansions.For example, house sparrows (Passer domesticus) in Kenya—the site of one of the most recent range expansions of this species—differed behaviorally depending on where they occur within the new range: individuals at the range-edge were less neophobic and more exploratory than individuals residing near the site of introduction (i.e., the population core). Here, we investigated whether these patterns were general among sparrow invasions by measuring behavior in birds from a more recent and independent range expansion in Senegal. We also asked whether birds habituated at different rates to novel environments and objects, something we had not evaluated before in Kenya. We hypothesized that populations near the range-edge would be more exploratory and less neophobic than populations near the site of introduction; we also expected faster habituation in both contexts in range-edge birds. We found that birds closer to the range edge were more exploratory and less neophobic than birds from the core. However, these differences dissipated over time, suggesting that plasticity in these behaviors might underlie the success of this species generally as an invader.
