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The Importance of Validating Experimental Setups: Lessons from Studies of Food Choice Copying in Zebra Finches
Author(s) -
Rojas Mora Alfonso,
Forstmeier Wolfgang
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/eth.12263
Subject(s) - copying , zebra finch , foraging , population , zebra (computer) , psychology , generalizability theory , taeniopygia , cognitive psychology , social psychology , biology , developmental psychology , ecology , computer science , neuroscience , demography , genetics , sociology , operating system
The use of social information for foraging decisions has attracted much research attention. One line of research makes use of experimental assays of food choice copying to study whether specific traits of demonstrators influence whether or not an onlooking individual will copy their behavior. For instance, Benskin (Animal Behaviour, 64, 2002 and 823) reported that captive juvenile zebra finches always copied the foraging decision made by a male wearing red color rings as opposed to one wearing green rings. Here, we report an attempt to examine the generalizability of this finding using another zebra finch population. Our experiment did not show any effect of male ring color on onlooker's food choice and further revealed various population‐specific differences in behavior, for instance, in aversion toward novel feeding sources. We therefore conducted two follow‐up experiments to test the validity of the behavioral assay. These experiments revealed that zebra finches of our population often do not copy demonstrator food choice at all, and that copying, if it occurs, may be sensitive to very specific conditions of the experimental setup. Problematically, after testing a total of 124 onlookers (60 in the first experiment, 32 in the second, and 32 in the third), we still cannot confidently say whether or when our birds copy from demonstrators. Hence, we emphasize the risks of adopting experimental procedures that have proven successful in one study, without extensively validating them for the own study. The seemingly more rewarding follow‐up experiments can bear high risks of yielding false‐positive findings that can then be misinterpreted as justification for an actually uninformative experimental procedure.