The cognitive ecology of animal construction behaviour: Individual differences in asocial and social learning

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The ability to learn from watching others, called social learning, allows animals (including humans) to learn how to solve problems without engaging in time-consuming trial-and-error learning. Social learning is thought to be a cornerstone to forming and maintaining cultural traditions. While learning what food to eat, who to mate with, what song to sing and who to avoid from others has been well studied we know much less about the role social learning plays when animals are interacting with and manipulating physical features of their environment (physical cognition). One example of physical cognition in animals that has received lots of attention is tool use, although very few animals engage in this behaviour and even fewer appear to learn about tools from watching others. Here I propose a new system to study how information about physical problems may be learned socially: nest building in birds.******We have long been fascinated by the beauty and diversity of nests that are built by birds. For the birds themselves, building the correct nest is key to their reproductive success: if they get the nest right they have a chance to fledge young, if they get the nest wrong, they will surely fail. Despite the importance of nests we still do not know how a bird knows what nest to build. Almost every bird builds some type of nest in which to lay eggs and rear young. As this intimately links a bird to the environment a builder stands to learn a lot from observing both the success and failure of others. In the light of climate change building the right nest is an especially important accomplishment. ******I propose to test how birds use information provided by other individuals to learn how to build a nest. I would do this by experimentally manipulating the social information that is provided to zebra finches in both a controlled laboratory and an outdoor aviary environment. Then I will measure the extent that these birds use social information when they make their own nest-building decisions. Zebra finches are useful for studying the role of social learning in nest building because they build year-round, with a diversity of material, allow others near when they are building, and the young reach sexual maturity and build their first nest when they are 90 days old. The four specific questions I would ask are: (1) when do birds learn; (2) what are they learning; (3) what is the importance of social learning, and (4) what part of the brain is important in social learning? The experiments I would conduct to answer these questions will begin to address the extent to which social learning underpins this little-known but fundamental avian behaviour. Because nest building specifically, and construction behaviour more generally, is common among animals, this projects lays the ground work for a larger comparative analysis aimed at understanding the evolution of social learning.**