⁉️ How do you train a grackle to be more flexible? Serial reversal learning! #TheGrackleProject has them form a color 🎨 preference, and then reverse the preference over and over again until they get fast at reversing (it only takes 6-8 reversals to get fast)
https://nerdculture.de/@CorinaLogan/113551520178546430
https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.284

The wide ranging effects of the flexibility training led us to start the #ManyIndividuals project to see whether we can train threatened and endangered species to be more flexible, and if this helps them survive in human-modified environments (where the grackles shine)
https://github.com/ManyIndividuals/ManyIndividuals

In the process of studying #behavioral #flexibility in great-tailed grackles on #TheGrackleProject, we discovered 🎉 a new measure of flexibility! The grackles that were more flexible in the reversal learning test also switched between eating different food types more often in the wild 🌮 🍿 🍪 🍒

This is such an exciting discovery because it is really difficult to bring birds into aviaries to measure their flexibility. Now we have the ability to measure their flexibility just by watching them in the wild!

This will make studying flexibility much more accessible to a wide range of researchers because, apart from needing to be able to tell the individuals apart, all that is needed is a pair of binoculars
Article: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.573
Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

#Behavioral #flexibility is not the primary facilitator of a rapid #range expansion. Although we found high levels of flexibility in 2 successful urban bird species (great-tailed & boat-tailed grackles), only one (great) is rapidly expanding its range. This suggests flexibility alone doesn't drive rapid range expansions

#TheGrackleProject went to Florida to study boat-tailed grackle flexibility and compare it with the great-tailed grackles. These species look and behave so similarly, if they were right next to each other, I couldn’t tell them apart (except greats have yellow irises and these boats had brown irises). They are parking lot birds through & through! 🅿️

But in the aviaries, it becomes obvious really quickly that the great-tailed grackles are much more persistent - they will try and try to solve something, whereas a boat-tailed grackle often just sits on their perch 🐥, looks at the apparatus & decides not to even try

https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.582
https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x

The growing body of research we have been conducting on #TheGrackleProject is showing that #behavioral #flexibility enables birds to #adapt to #human #modified #habitats 🌆 , but plays a smaller role in expanding into new #geographic areas 🗺️

Moving to new towns likely involves more #persistence because we previously found that grackles on the edge of their range in northern California had similar levels of average flexibility (though higher variance), but were more persistent than grackles nearer the center of their range in Arizona https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.320/

This is also supported by the fact that the preliminary data we were able to collect on persistence in boat-tailed grackles (who are not rapidly expanding their geographic range) showed that they are less persistent than great-tailed grackles, while having similar levels of flexibility
Articles: https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.573 and https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.582
Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25000634/0701-evan-when-the-city-comes-to-you-150495-x