Meeting Abstract
Individuals that hesitate to approach or interact with novel objects in their environment can be described as neophobic. Urbanization, pollution, and the introduction of non-native species impact an animal’s natural habitat, and populations of wild animals frequently come into contact with novel objects and novel foods. Therefore, an individual’s willingness or hesitation to approach a new object or food can determine the individual’s – and even the population’s – survival. Within populations of wild House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), it has been observed that individuals vary widely in their responses to novel objects and foods. We set out to characterize the neophobia responses of wild-caught sparrows (n=24) using a panel of behavioral tests in a laboratory environment. In all tests, we removed food dishes overnight. In the novel object test, we either replaced food dishes (control) or replaced food dishes with one of the five different novel objects placed in, on, or near the food dish (novel object treatment). In in the second test, we gave sparrows either their normal mixture of seeds and food pellets (control) of one of four different novel foods (novel food treatment). The third test exposed sparrows to the same novel object for four consecutive days (novel object habituation). We found that in the novel object and food treatments responses were highly variable, although most individuals displayed repeatable behavioral phenotypes throughout all treatments.
