Personality in the wild zebra finch: exploration, sociality, and reproduction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although personality has been well studied in a wide range of species, relatively few studies have assessed if behavior in standardized captive tests is predictive of behavior in the wild. We captured wild zebra finches around 2 breeding colonies and assayed their exploratory behavior with a novel environment test. The birds’ foraging behavior in the wild was also measured with the use of a passive integrated transponder tag system to monitor their use of feeders that were periodically moved around the colonies to assess exploratory behavior and sociality. During the same period, individuals’ reproductive success was monitored at the nest-boxes being used in this area. We found that our measures of sociality, wild, and captive exploration were repeatable, but contrary to our predictions, exploration in the novel environment test was not significantly correlated with exploration of feeders in the wild. We failed to find a predicted negative relationship between exploration and sociality, instead finding a significant positive correlation between exploration in the novel environment and sociality. Finally, we found little evidence that any of our measured personality traits influenced reproductive success at the colony, either individually or when the interactions between the personalities of both members of the pair were taken into account. The only exception was that highly exploratory males (assayed with wild feeder behavior) were more likely to make breeding attempts than less exploratory males. Our results suggest that researchers should use caution when using tests such as the classic novel environment test to make inferences about personality in wild populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".