Eastern Bluebird Cognitive Performance Under Acute Noise Disturbance

22 birds per treatment were tested using a mechanical operant conditioning device during peak nestling provisioning. The dataset, authored by Jason Keagy and last updated in May 2026, captures problem-solving performance, motivation, and personality traits of Eastern bluebirds in the presence or absence of acute anthropogenic noise. It includes measures of nestling condition and eventual fledging success.

Use Cases

• Analyze the resilience of cognitive performance to noise based on problem-solving scores across treatments.
• Investigate sex-specific behavioral differences associated with problem-solving performance under noise.
• Study learning over time based on the reported improvement in problem-solving performance.
• Model relationships between personality traits (neophobia, activity, persistence) and cognitive outcomes in a wild bird population.

Strengths

• Experimental design includes a control and treatment group with 22 birds each.
• Measures multiple variables: cognitive performance, personality traits, nestling condition, and fledging success.
• Data is published under a permissive CC0-1.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset size is listed as 0.0 B, indicating a very limited scope or potential metadata issue.

Provenance

Source

Jason Keagy via figshare

Collection Method

Data collected using a mechanical operant conditioning device presented on nest boxes.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-22 06:35:19; freshness should be verified.