Behavioral innovation promotes population expansion in great tits: Behavioral and epigenetic mechanisms

Anthropogenic activities, such as the expansion of human settlements and global climate change, change the environment at an unprecedented rate (Di Marco and Santini, 2015; IPCC 2022). This causes species to shift their distributions, for example, poleward in response to the warming climate (Hastings et al., 2020). Adapting to new environments increases the difficulty of survival for species (Urban, 2015). Some traits help species adapt to new environments and survive challenges(Møller et al., 2008), thus playing an important role in range expansions. However, the specific traits that make a species successful in range expansion remain unknown