Who do birds want to hang out with? Social preference for group size in Pinyon Jays

Victoria Biancalana & Bailey Wilson Author

04/04/2021 Added

10 Plays

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A study on how decisions are made using pinyon jays as a reference to what variants influences decisions, such as group size.

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[00:00:03.760]Hello.
[00:00:04.593]Thank you for being interested in our talk,
[00:00:05.967]"Who do birds want to hang out with",
[00:00:07.340]a study on social preference for group size in pinyon jays.
[00:00:12.430]For those who are not aware, UNL houses
[00:00:14.310]a pinion jay colony of about 30 individuals,
[00:00:17.160]both with male and female birds.
[00:00:19.290]This particular species is of interest
[00:00:21.070]because of their complex social system.
[00:00:23.440]Pinyon jays live in colonies
[00:00:25.270]that contain 250 to 500 members.
[00:00:28.000]They live in fluid communities
[00:00:29.340]called fusion-fusion societies.
[00:00:31.820]This means that some members of one colony
[00:00:33.810]may break off to join another.
[00:00:36.860]Pinyon jays are thought to have a strong social cognition
[00:00:38.990]because of this fusion-fission society
[00:00:41.250]and their following of a hierarchy
[00:00:43.020]and how they'll form crushes,
[00:00:44.840]Crushes is when all offspring are
[00:00:47.320]collectively taken care of by a subset of adults
[00:00:49.640]while their parents may take off to forage.
[00:00:53.910]In this study, we're using a similarity model
[00:00:55.990]to describe the step-by-step process of decision-making.
[00:00:59.870]In this experiment, we are trying to find
[00:01:01.640]the preference for group size,
[00:01:04.300]and we hypothesize that pinyon jays
[00:01:06.150]would prefer larger group sizes like they would in the wild.
[00:01:13.010]This experiment is just one of many trying
[00:01:15.030]to fill in the gaps of what we know about making decisions.
[00:01:18.530]Here we investigate what types of variants
[00:01:20.670]may influence a bird's decision,
[00:01:22.700]such as sex and how they may perceive numbers.
[00:01:26.630]Being able to differentiate between numbers
[00:01:28.420]may be important, because if there are
[00:01:30.010]a lot of predators around and birds are moving flocks,
[00:01:33.570]they may want to be a part of a larger group.
[00:01:38.290]In order to study this question, we created an apparatus
[00:01:40.800]that would force the birds to make a choice
[00:01:42.410]between two groups of birds to spend time with,
[00:01:44.890]simulating a wild flock.
[00:01:46.770]The apparatus consisted of a Y-maze.
[00:01:49.280]The left and right choices had a different number of birds.
[00:01:52.910]Every time the experiment was performed,
[00:01:54.970]the number of birds in each cage would be different.
[00:01:57.520]The pairing would be one versus two, four versus six,
[00:02:01.440]all the way up to five versus six.
[00:02:06.360]Each pairing would be repeated
[00:02:08.190]until we hit our goal of 105 rounds.
[00:02:12.260]Each round would consist of 10 birds completing the task.
[00:02:15.590]We would start them at the base of the Y
[00:02:17.460]and once they entered their chosen chute,
[00:02:19.640]they remained in there for three minutes
[00:02:21.180]to experience the social interaction
[00:02:22.940]with the number of birds they chose.
[00:02:32.510]There were 10 birds in the experiment
[00:02:34.360]and they each are represented on the X-axis.
[00:02:37.350]75 trials were conducted for each bird.
[00:02:40.390]The darker pink represents the number of trials
[00:02:42.660]where the bird chose the large group size,
[00:02:45.600]and the lighter pink bar shows the number of trials
[00:02:48.290]the bird chose the smaller group size.
[00:02:57.180]In this graph, the data from each of the individual birds
[00:02:59.980]are combined and the Y-axis represents
[00:03:02.900]the percent of trials chosen from the birds as a whole.
[00:03:06.110]From this graph, it was determined that the birds preferred
[00:03:09.000]the larger group size statistically more
[00:03:11.470]than the smaller group size, with a p value less than 0.01.
[00:03:24.660]This graph was created to see if the birds had
[00:03:27.110]a small bird size to large bird size ratio preference.
[00:03:31.120]The X-axis represents these ratios, ranging from 1:6 to 5:6.
[00:03:37.040]It was determined from this graph that the birds
[00:03:39.390]did not have a ratio preference.
[00:03:49.114]This graph was created to see if the birds
[00:03:51.310]had a preference of the difference of the number of birds
[00:03:54.100]in the large group compared to the small group.
[00:03:57.010]From the graph, it was determined that the birds
[00:03:59.220]only had a preference in difference
[00:04:01.240]if the difference was five.
[00:04:03.260]This would have been when their choice was
[00:04:05.080]between one bird on the small group side
[00:04:07.660]or six birds on the large group side.
[00:04:18.890]In this experiment, it was found that most of the birds
[00:04:21.380]preferred the side with the larger number of birds.
[00:04:24.060]This matches our hypothesis that the birds would have
[00:04:26.370]a social preference in this task, like wild pinyon jays,
[00:04:29.670]preferring large groups rather than small.
[00:04:32.210]There was only one bird out of 10
[00:04:33.980]that preferred the smaller group size.
[00:04:36.490]When we increased the complexity of their choices
[00:04:38.860]by looking at ratio and difference,
[00:04:40.920]it was found that the birds did not have a ratio preference
[00:04:43.880]but did have a difference preference at five.
[00:04:46.740]We are currently conducting the second phase
[00:04:48.720]of this experiment that researches
[00:04:50.550]the impact distance has on bird choice.
[00:04:53.530]Once this phase is complete, the final part
[00:04:55.840]of this experiment will combine distance
[00:04:57.930]and number preference to see the overall impact
[00:05:00.600]of these variables combined.
[00:05:02.710]If you found this presentation interesting,
[00:05:05.120]the Avian Cognition Lab also has a presentation
[00:05:07.890]on numerical discrimination in pinyon jays.

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Who do birds want to hang out with? Social preference for group size in Pinyon Jays

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