Environmental Influences on Neuromorphology in the Non-Native Starling Sturnus vulgaris

Abstract

Cognitive traits are predicted to be under intense selection in animals moving into new environments and may determine the success, or otherwise, of dispersal and invasions. In particular, spatial information related to resource distribution is an important determinant of neural development. Spatial information is predicted to vary for invasive species encountering novel environments. However, few studies have tested how cognition or neural development varies intraspecifically within an invasive species. In Australia, the non-native common starling Sturnus vulgaris inhabits a range of habitats that vary in seasonal resource availability and distribution. We aimed to identify variations in the brain mass and hippocampus volume of starlings in Australia related to environmental variation across two substantially different habitat types. Specifically, we predicted variation in brain mass and hippocampal volume in relation to environmental conditions, latitude, and climatic variables. To test this, brain mass and volumes of the hippocampus and two control brain regions (telencephalon and tractus septomesencephalicus) were quantified from starling brains gathered from across the species' range in south eastern Australia. When comparing across an environmental gradient, there was a significant interaction between sex and environment for overall brain mass, with greater sexual dimorphism in brain mass in inland populations compared to those at the coast. There was no significant difference in hippocampal volume in relation to environmental measures (hippocampus volume, n = 17) for either sex. While these data provide no evidence for intraspecific environmental drivers for changes in hippocampus volume in European starlings in Australia, they do suggest that environmental factors contribute to sex differences in brain mass. This study identifies associations between the brain volume of a non-native species and the environment; further work in this area is required to elucidate the mechanisms driving this relationship.

Keywords: Avian hippocampus; Bird; Brain; Ecology; Invasive species; Spatial memory; Starling; Telencephalon.

Fig. 1

Map of eastern Australia where the circles represent collection localities and the size of the circles represents the number of samples collected. The number of samples ranged from 8 to 10.

Fig. 2

Lines represent the predicted values from a multivariate linear regression model testing the relationship between brain mass as the dependent variable, sex × PC1 as an interaction term, and bird mass as an independent variable. Circles represent females and triangles represent males. The points represent the real brain mass values.