ArticlePloS one2019
Characterizing innovators: Ecological and individual predictors of problem-solving performance.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Phenotypic Flexibility in the City: A Meta-Analysis on Variation.Ecology letters · 2026Pooled it
- To pull or push? Performance of four passerine species in the lever-pulling task.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Bumble bees that follow a stricter routine innovate less: Foraging behaviors, environmental complexity, and how they relate to novel problem solving.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Low motivation drives poor performance of infected, anorexic crows on a string-pulling task.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Rethinking raptors: caracaras as a model for avian cognition in the wild.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Are comparable studies really comparable? Suggestions from a problem-solving experiment on urban and rural great tits.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Innovation across 13 ungulate species: problem solvers are less integrated in the social group and less neophobic.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Innovative problem-solving in a small, wild canid.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Neophobia and innovation in Critically Endangered Bali myna,Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Behavioural factors underlying innovative problem-solving differences in an avian predator from two contrasting habitats.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Seasonal changes in problem-solving in wild African striped mice.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Can we build a neuroecology of innovativeness similar to that pioneered by David Sherry for spatial memory?Learning & behavior · 2022Article
- The effect of urbanization on innovation in spotted hyenas.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Do alternative reproductive tactics predict problem-solving performance in African striped mice?Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Problem Solving in Animals: Proposal for an Ontogenetic Perspective.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Enhanced problem-solving ability as an adaptation to urban environments in house mice.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Behavioural innovation, the use of new behaviours or existing ones in novel contexts, can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences for animals. An understanding of these consequences would be incomplete without considering the traits that predispose certain individuals to exhibit innovative behaviour. Several individual and ecological variables are hypothesized to affect innovativeness, but empirical studies show mixed results. We examined the effects of dominance rank, exploratory personality, and urbanisation on the innovativeness of wild-caught black-capped chickadees using a survival analysis of their performance in two problem-solving tasks. Additionally, we provide one of the first investigations of the predictors of persistence in a problem-solving context. For lever pulling, we found a trend for dominants to outperform subordinates, particularly in rural birds, which did not align with predictions from the necessity drives innovation hypothesis. When examining possible explanations for this trend we found that older chickadees outperformed younger birds. This follow-up analysis also revealed a positive effect of exploratory personality on the lever-pulling performance of chickadees. Our results suggest that experience may foster innovation in certain circumstances, for instance via the application of previously-acquired information or skills to a novel problem. As we found different predictors for both tasks, this suggests that task characteristics influence the innovative propensity of individuals, and that their effects should be investigated experimentally.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.