Are comparable studies really comparable? Suggestions from a problem-solving experiment on urban and rural great tits

Bibliographic Details
Title:	Are comparable studies really comparable? Suggestions from a problem-solving experiment on urban and rural great tits
Authors:	Ernő Vincze, Ineta Kačergytė, Juliane Gaviraghi Mussoi, Utku Urhan, Anders Brodin
Source:	Animal Cognition, Vol 27, Iss 1, Pp 1-14 (2024)
Publisher Information:	Springer, 2024.
Publication Year:	2024
Collection:	LCC:Zoology LCC:Consciousness. Cognition
Subject Terms:	Cognitive ability, Urban and rural environment, String-pulling, Plug-opening, Experimental replicability, Zoology, QL1-991, Consciousness. Cognition, BF309-499
More Details:	Abstract Performance in tests of various cognitive abilities has often been compared, both within and between species. In intraspecific comparisons, habitat effects on cognition has been a popular topic, frequently with an underlying assumption that urban animals should perform better than their rural conspecifics. In this study, we tested problem-solving ability in great tits Parus major, in a string-pulling and a plug-opening test. Our aim was to compare performance between urban and rural great tits, and to compare their performance with previously published problem solving studies. Our great tits perfomed better in string-pulling than their conspecifics in previous studies (solving success: 54%), and better than their close relative, the mountain chickadee Poecile gambeli, in the plug-opening test (solving success: 70%). Solving latency became shorter over four repeated sessions, indicating learning abilities, and showed among-individual correlation between the two tests. However, the solving ability did not differ between habitat types in either test. Somewhat unexpectedly, we found marked differences between study years even though we tried to keep conditions identical. These were probably due to small changes to the experimental protocol between years, for example the unavoidable changes of observers and changes in the size and material of test devices. This has an important implication: if small changes in an otherwise identical set-up can have strong effects, meaningful comparisons of cognitive performance between different labs must be extremely hard. In a wider perspective this highlights the replicability problem often present in animal behaviour studies.
Document Type:	article
File Description:	electronic resource
Language:	English
ISSN:	1435-9456
Relation:	https://doaj.org/toc/1435-9456
DOI:	10.1007/s10071-024-01885-3
Access URL:	https://doaj.org/article/11ff5fc9c5b946c29b85d4a78eeded2f
Accession Number:	edsdoj.11ff5fc9c5b946c29b85d4a78eeded2f
Database:	Directory of Open Access Journals

More Details
ISSN:	14359456
DOI:	10.1007/s10071-024-01885-3
Published in:	Animal Cognition
Language:	English