Brain size as a driver of avian escape strategy

After detecting an approaching predator, animals make a decision when to flee. Prey will initiate flight soon after detecting a predator so as to minimize attentional costs related to on-going monitoring of the whereabouts of the predator. Such costs may compete with foraging and other maintenance a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2015-07, Vol.5 (1), p.11913-11913, Article 11913
Main Authors: Samia, Diogo S. M., Pape Møller, Anders, Blumstein, Daniel T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158/856
631/158/857
Animal behavior
Animal cognition
Animals
Attention
Birds - anatomy & histology
Birds - physiology
Body size
Brain
Brain - anatomy & histology
Cognitive ability
Costs
Decision making
Escape Reaction
Female
Flight
Group size
Habitats
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypotheses
Interspecific
Life history
Male
Morphology
multidisciplinary
Organ Size
Predators
Predatory Behavior
Prey
Science
Species Specificity
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Summary:After detecting an approaching predator, animals make a decision when to flee. Prey will initiate flight soon after detecting a predator so as to minimize attentional costs related to on-going monitoring of the whereabouts of the predator. Such costs may compete with foraging and other maintenance activities and hence be larger than the costs of immediate flight. The drivers of interspecific variation in escape strategy are poorly known. Here we investigated the morphological, life history and natural history traits that correlate with variation in avian escape strategy across a sample of 96 species of birds. Brain mass, body size, habitat structure and group size were the main predictors of escape strategy. The direction of the effect of these traits was consistent with selection for a reduction of monitoring costs. Therefore, attentional costs depend on relative brain size, which determines the ability to monitor the whereabouts of potential predators and the difficulty of this task as reflected by habitat and social complexity. Thus brain size and the cognitive functions associated with it, constitute a general framework for explaining the effects of body size, habitat structure and sociality identified as determinants of avian escape strategy.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep11913