Abstract
Noisy miners (Manorina melanocephala) are dietary generalist, highly social native Australian honeyeaters. Preliminary work indicates that these birds can learn via observation; acquisition of a simple foraging task is facilitated by demonstration of the task by a conspecific. The current focus of the project is to replace live demonstration with video playback demonstration of the foraging task, in order to pursue an experimental analysis of the behavioural mechanisms underlying social learning in the noisy miner. The second stage of the project will test for the presence of similar mechanisms in other species of honeyeater with different social and foraging ecologies. This work will test existing hypotheses regarding the ecological factors associated with the development of evolution of social learning.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 38-38 |
Number of pages | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |
Event | ASSAB 2007 - Canberra Duration: 12 Apr 2007 → 15 Apr 2007 |
Conference
Conference | ASSAB 2007 |
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City | Canberra |
Period | 12/04/07 → 15/04/07 |