Food acquisition patterns of the three-striped palm squirrel are influenced by interactions: variation in foraging response across an urban-rural gradient

Urbanisation significantly alters the habitat and resources accessible to urban animals. Synanthropic animals adapt by exploiting available resources and modulating abundance across the urban habitat matrix. Urban arboreal mammals, such as palm squirrels, encountering altered foraging resources in green spaces and across the matrix, develop strategies to maximise their fitness, including modulating food selection, spatial microhabitat use, and social interactions. We examined whether squirrel abundance affects foraging patterns and whether social interactions at the feeding site regulated individuals' exploratory tendencies. We conducted cafeteria experiments with F. palmarum in rural and urban areas around Tirupati, India and tested for differences in responses to novelty, food selection, and dominance interactions among individuals. We observed a preferential bias towards processed food and approach tendencies were stronger in urban individuals. Urban regions marked with a higher density of squirrels, were associated with higher competitive interactions showing transient social despots of dominance, leading to increased exploration by non-dominant individuals. On the contrary, a lower density of squirrels in rural areas, leads to reduced dominance interactions and subsequent lack of exploration. The potential exploration and consumption of novel resources feeds into the urban loop which enhances population in urban areas, whereas the opposite effect is observed in rural areas. This study highlights how urban commensal organisms, such as squirrels, adopt behaviours to maximise resource utilisation which is modulated by social interactions and can potentially determine the population dynamics in changing landscapes.