Henke-von der Malsburg Johanna, Fichtel Claudia
Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology Unit, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primatology, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Kellnerweg 6, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
R Soc Open Sci. 2018 Aug 15;5(8):180480. doi: 10.1098/rsos.180480. eCollection 2018 Aug.
The propensity to flexibly innovate behavioural variants might advantage animals when dealing with novel or modified ecological or social challenges. Interspecific innovative abilities can be predicted by the degree of ecological generalism and intraspecific variation is predicted by personality traits. To examine the effects of these factors on innovation, we compared problem-solving abilities in the generalist grey mouse lemurs () and the more specialized Madame Berthe's mouse lemurs () in western Madagascar. We examined personality traits by testing 54 individuals in open field and novel object tests, and we assessed problem-solving abilities by presenting an artificial feeding-box that could be opened by three different techniques. The first two techniques presented novel problems and the third technique a modified problem to the more complex second novel problem. In both species, motivation, early success and better inhibitory control characterized innovators and predicted superior problem-solving performance. Although both species performed equally well in finding a solution to the novel problems, the specialist species was more efficient in finding a novel solution to a familiar problem. Since the ecological specialist also exhibited more inhibitory control in this task than the generalist, we propose that specialists may dispose of more efficient problem-solving behaviour.
灵活创新行为变体的倾向可能会使动物在应对新出现的或改变了的生态或社会挑战时具有优势。种间创新能力可以通过生态泛化程度来预测，而种内变异则由个性特征来预测。为了研究这些因素对创新的影响，我们比较了马达加斯加西部的泛化种灰鼠狐猴（）和更特化的贝尔特夫人鼠狐猴（）的解决问题能力。我们通过在旷场和新物体测试中对54只个体进行测试来研究个性特征，并通过呈现一个可以用三种不同技术打开的人工喂食盒来评估解决问题的能力。前两种技术提出了新问题，第三种技术针对更复杂的第二个新问题提出了一个修改后的问题。在两个物种中，动机、早期成功和更好的抑制控制是创新者的特征，并预测了更好的解决问题表现。虽然两个物种在找到解决新问题的方法上表现同样出色，但特化物种在找到解决熟悉问题的新方法上效率更高。由于生态特化物种在这项任务中也比泛化物种表现出更多的抑制控制，我们提出特化物种可能具有更有效的解决问题行为。
