Ecological Differences in Social Learning between Adjacent,Mixing, Populations of Zenaida Doves

In Zenaida doves, Zenaida aurita, of Barbados, previous work has shown that social learning is associated with foraging ecology in the field: in captive experiments, group-foraging birds learn more readily from a conspecific tutor, while territorial birds learn from the heterospecific they most often feed with in mixed-species aggregations, the Carib grackle, Quiscalus lugubris. This study examines foraging ecology and social learning in a dove population that experiences both territorial defence and occasional group feeding, Brandon's Beach. In part I, we document the dual foraging pattern seen in this population, which lives only a few hundred metres from the group-foraging harbour population studied in previous work. In part II, we show that doves from Brandon's Beach, consistent with their dual foraging experience, learn as readily from a conspecific as they do from a heterospecific tutor; control doves from the adjacent harbour site learn primarily from a conspecific tutor. Field sightings of banded individuals caught at the harbour and Brandon's show strong site fidelity, but sufficient movement between areas (4%) to make reproductive divergence between the two neighbouring populations highly unlikely, suggesting that social learning differences between them are non-genetic.