Interspecific variation in fear responses predicts urbanization in birds

Abstract

Urbanization and domestication share features in terms of characters that are favored by selection. These include loss of fear of humans, reduced corticosterone levels, prolonged breeding seasons, and several others. Here, I test the hypothesis that urbanization results from differential colonization of urban areas by species with heterogeneous levels of fear in the ancestral rural populations, followed by a reduction in variance in fear responses with a subsequent increase in diversity of fear responses as urban populations become adapted to the urban environment. Using information on variance in flight initiation distances (FIDs) when approached by a human, I show that rural populations of birds characterized by short mean flight distances and large variances in flight distances differentially colonized urban areas. As a consequence of this urban invasion, urban populations lost variation in FID. The variance in FID was initially larger in rural than in urban populations but eventually became larger in urban populations with time since urbanization. This secondary increase in variance in FID of urban populations was associated with an increase in population density of urban populations, suggesting that as birds became adapted to urban areas, they secondarily gained variance in behavioral flexibility.