TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mazza, Valeria
A1  - Günther, Anja
T1  - City mice and country mice
BT  - innovative problem solving in rural and urban noncommensal rodents
JF  - Animal behaviour
N2  - The ability to produce innovative behaviour is a key determinant in the successful coping with environmental challenges and changes. The expansion of human-altered environments presents wildlife with multiple novel situations in which innovativeness could be beneficial. A better understanding of the drivers of within-species variation in innovation propensity and its consequences will provide insights into the traits enabling animals to thrive in the face of human-induced rapid environmental change. We compared problem-solving performance of 31 striped field mice, Apodemus agrarius, originating from rural or urban environments in a battery of eight foraging extraction tasks. We tested whether differences in problem-solving performance were mediated by the extent and duration of the animal's exploration of the experimental set-ups, the time required to solve the tasks, and their persistence. In addition, we tested the influence of the diversity of motor responses, as well as of behavioural traits boldness and activity on problem-solving performance. Urban individuals were better problem solvers despite rural individuals approaching faster and interacting longer with the test set-ups. Participation rates and time required to solve a task did not differ between rural and urban individuals. However, in case of failure to solve a task, rural mice were more persistent. The best predictors of solving success, aside from the area of origin, were the time spent exploring the set-ups and boldness, while activity and diversity of motor responses did not explain it. Problem-solving ability could thus be a contributing factor to the successful coping with the rapid and recent expansion of human-altered environments.
KW  - animal personality
KW  - anthropogenic environment
KW  - Apodemus agrarius
KW  - HIREC
KW  - individual differences
KW  - innovation
KW  - problem solving
KW  - rodent
KW  - urbanization
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.12.007
SN  - 0003-3472
SN  - 1095-8282
VL  - 172
SP  - 197
EP  - 210
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -