Data for Behavioural plasticity is associated with global population density and geographic range size in birds

Behavioural plasticity, the capacity to adjust behaviour to local conditions, is hypothesised to help species thrive, yet its role in shaping large-scale patterns of ecological prosperity remains unclear. Using a phylogenetic comparative analysis of over 7,000 bird species, we tested whether behavioural innovation, measured from literature reports of novel feeding behaviours, predicts two axes of prosperity, global population density and geographic range size.

After accounting for phylogeny and a suite of life-history and ecological traits, most innovation metrics were positively associated with both density and range size, whether innovation was scored as presence/absence or as a research-effort-corrected rate. Phylogenetic path analyses leaned towards innovation promoting prosperity rather than the reverse, strongly for the binary metric but only weakly for the innovation rate.