The ability to produce innovative behaviour is a key determinant in the successful coping with environmental challenges and changes. The expansion of human-altered environments presents wildlife with multiple novel situations in which innovativeness could be beneficial. A better understanding of the drivers of within-species variation in innovation propensity and its consequences will provide insights into the traits enabling animals to thrive in the face of human-induced rapid environmental change. We compared problem-solving performance of 31 striped field mice, Apodemus agrarius, originating from rural or urban environments in a battery of eight foraging extraction tasks. We tested whether differences in problem-solving performance were mediated by the extent and duration of the animal's exploration of the experimental set-ups, the time required to solve the tasks, and their persistence. In addition, we tested the influence of the diversity of motor responses, as well as of behavioural traits boldness and activity on problem-solving performance. Urban individuals were better problem solvers despite rural individuals approaching faster and interacting longer with the test set-ups. Participation rates and time required to solve a task did not differ between rural and urban individuals. However, in case of failure to solve a task, rural mice were more persistent. The best predictors of solving success, aside from the area of origin, were the time spent exploring the set-ups and boldness, while activity and diversity of motor responses did not explain it. Problem-solving ability could thus be a contributing factor to the successful coping with the rapid and recent expansion of human-altered environments.

产生创新行为的能力是成功应对环境挑战和变化的关键因素。人类改变环境的扩展为野生生物带来了多种新颖的情况，其中创新可能是有益的。更好地了解物种内创新倾向变异的驱动因素及其后果，将有助于深入了解使动物在人类引起的快速环境变化中face壮成长的特征。我们比较了31只条纹田鼠（Apodemus agrarius）的解决问题性能源自农村或城市环境，共进行八次觅食提取任务。我们测试了问题解决性能的差异是否由动物探索实验装置的程度和持续时间，解决任务所需的时间及其持久性所介导。此外，我们测试了运动反应的多样性以及行为特质和行为对解决问题性能的影响。尽管农村个体更快地接触测试装置并与之互动的时间更长，但城市个体还是更好的问题解决者。城乡之间，完成任务所需的参与率和时间没有差异。但是，如果无法解决任务，则农村老鼠会更加顽固。解决成功的最好的预测指标，除了原产地以外，还有时间花在探索设置和大胆上，而活动性和运动反应的多样性并不能解释这一点。解决问题的能力因此可能成为成功应对人类改变的环境的快速和最近扩展的一个因素。