Cognition and personality when deciding what to eat: foraging plasticity and diet in the great tit

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dc.availability.bitstreamembargoed
dc.check.date2025-09-30
dc.contributor.advisorQuinn, Johnen
dc.contributor.advisorDavidson, Gabrielleen
dc.contributor.advisorKulahci, Ipeken
dc.contributor.advisorReichert, Michaelen
dc.contributor.authorCoomes, Jenny R.
dc.contributor.funderEuropean Research Councilen
dc.contributor.funderScience Foundation Irelanden
dc.date.accessioned2022-05-23T15:43:33Z
dc.date.available2022-05-23T15:43:33Z
dc.date.issued2021-06
dc.date.submitted2021-06
dc.description.abstractAnimal survival is highly dependent on consuming food resources, and many studies in behavioural ecology have investigated, for example, how animals optimise their foraging behaviour to increase their fitness. Yet recent work has shown that individuals differ consistently in their behaviours, known as animal personality, and therefore animals may be limited in their plasticity in response to different foraging opportunities. Similarly, individual differences in cognitive abilities may also drive foraging behaviour, but these mechanisms have rarely been explored under different ecological conditions. Advances in genetic sequencing of dietary components now make it possible to explore how animal personality and cognition influence foraging decisions and diet outcomes in wild birds. My thesis used the great tit to explore these ideas. In Chapter 2, I examined how one cognitive mechanism (inhibitory control) and a behavioural trait (exploration behaviour) that is closely associated with the fast-slow exploration personality axis, were associated with foraging flexibility, a type of behavioural plasticity, in two ecologically relevant contexts. Both inhibitory control and exploration behaviour were associated with foraging flexibility, but only when the value of an alternative food source was high and there was a risk of predation, respectively. The results show that how cognition and personality affect foraging flexibility is only revealed when the ecological context changes. While many studies of foraging behaviour quantify food choices, an alternative method is to look at the realised outcome of foraging choices – i.e. the diet, which represents multiple prey taxa consumed over multiple foraging events. In Chapter 3, I used DNA metabarcoding to describe the diet of adult and first year individuals in spring and winter, and the diet of nestlings in the nest, in coniferous and deciduous woodlands. I investigated the degree of dietary separation between demographic groups. Results suggest dietary differences between birds of different ages (adult, first year and nestling) and sexes, and that season and habitat play an important role. Investigating dietary variation advances our understanding of how individuals use resources across a heterogeneous landscape, and provides insight into how populations may adapt to environmental variation. In Chapter 4, I investigated how inhibitory control measured in the wild was associated with the spring diet of adults and the diet of nestlings. I expected that inhibitory control would be important for parents when deciding on the prey to provision their young. Inhibitory control of males was associated with their own diet whereas inhibitory control of females was associated with the diet of their offspring. This result suggests that cognitive differences associated with parental care differ between the sexes. In Chapter 5, I investigated how three cognitive traits (innovation, inhibitory control and learning) and one behavioural trait (exploration behaviour) were associated with the winter diet. I expected that any effects of cognition and exploration behaviour may be especially pronounced in winter when the challenge of finding food is greater than in the spring. Innovation and inhibitory control were associated with the dietary composition of plants, and innovation and exploration behaviour were associated with the dietary composition of invertebrates. My thesis represents the most comprehensive study on the diet of this key model species to date and by studying these wild birds in multiple contexts, I have demonstrated that foraging plasticity, and the extent to which animal personality and cognition drive behaviour and diet, are dependent on the environmental context, such as predation risk and season, and whether birds are foraging for themselves or their offspring. Understanding these dynamics will be important for future work, such as how individuals survive and populations persist in the face of environmental change.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationCoomes, J. R. 2021. Cognition and personality when deciding what to eat: foraging plasticity and diet in the great tit. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.en
dc.identifier.endpage324en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/13222
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.relation.projectinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7::SP2::ERC/617509/EU/The evolutionary ecology of cognition across a heterogeneous landscape/EVOLECOCOGen
dc.relation.projectinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/SFI/SFI ERC Support Programme/14/ERC/B3118/IE/SFI ERC Support - John Quinn/en
dc.rights© 2021, Jennifer Rose Coomes.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en
dc.subjectDNA metabarcodingen
dc.subjectAnimal behaviouren
dc.subjectEcologyen
dc.subjectBehavioural ecologyen
dc.subjectZoologyen
dc.subjectAnimal cognitionen
dc.subjectAnimal personalityen
dc.subjectForaging flexibilityen
dc.subjectBehavioural plasticityen
dc.subjectDieten
dc.subjectForagingen
dc.subjectInhibitory controlen
dc.subjectExploration behaviouren
dc.titleCognition and personality when deciding what to eat: foraging plasticity and diet in the great titen
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophyen
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