Meeting Abstract
Novel object assays have been used extensively to explore avian behavior and it has been assumed that exposure to such novelty is mildly stressful—this assumption, however, is rarely tested. We did so here using captive adult great tits (Parus major) derived from the fourth generation of bidirectional artificial selection on spatial and object neophobia. The results confirmed this common assumption—we observed a moderate but significant elevation in plasma corticosterone following 10 min of exposure to a novel object in the home cage. The magnitude of the hormonal stress response was independent of selection line and not attributable to human observer effects. Immediately following exposure to the novel object, birds were placed in restraint for 30 min and bled for an additional corticosterone sample. We found that this second stressor induced a strong corticosterone elevation that was selection line dependent, with the fast exploration line exhibiting the stronger response. These hormone results were complimented by estimates of behavioral coping, including the measurement of abnormal repetitive behaviors (ARBs) and locomotor activity in response to the novel object. This component of the study allowed us to test the hypothesis that exploratory personality is genetically correlated with routine forming behaviors such as ARBs—a suite of traits that have been observed in other species—and then link this behavioral variation to the simultaneously measured variation in corticosterone responses. We discuss these results in the context of animal personality research as well as animal models of behavioral and physiological dysregulation.
