Evaluating the novel-environment test for measurement of exploration by bird species

Novel-environment tests are the most widespread experimental technique for characterizing exploration, yet detailed evaluation of their performance among species is lacking. We compared the test for eight bird species by combining three well-known metrics of behavior: movement frequency, proportion of features visited, and scanning. In both overall and species-level analysis of our multi-group principal component analysis, all three metrics loaded strongly and similarly on one principal component, explaining comparable ranges of variation. We conclude that novel-environment tests are a robust means of quantifying exploration and that scanning behavior may be an important but under-used metric for exploration behavior.