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Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits

BACKGROUND: The classic optimal foraging theory (OFT) predicts animals’ food patch use assuming that individuals in a population use the same strategy while foraging. However, due to the existence of animal personality, i.e. repeatable inter-individual differences and intra-individual consistency in...

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Autores principales: Li, Chunlin, Zhang, Xinyu, Cheng, Lin, Zhang, Baowei, Zhang, Feng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10468902/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37653456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00510-2
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author Li, Chunlin
Zhang, Xinyu
Cheng, Lin
Zhang, Baowei
Zhang, Feng
author_facet Li, Chunlin
Zhang, Xinyu
Cheng, Lin
Zhang, Baowei
Zhang, Feng
author_sort Li, Chunlin
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The classic optimal foraging theory (OFT) predicts animals’ food patch use assuming that individuals in a population use the same strategy while foraging. However, due to the existence of animal personality, i.e. repeatable inter-individual differences and intra-individual consistency in behaviours over time and/or across contexts, individuals often exhibit different behavioural strategies, challenging the basic assumptions of the OFT. Here, we tested whether personality traits (boldness and exploration in open arena) of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica, 38 females and 34 males) influenced their patch use in two foraging experiments with different inter-patch distances (i.e. 2 m in Experiment 1 and 3 m in Experiment 2). RESULTS: The total feeding time and food intake of individuals did not differ between Experiment 1 and 2, but in both experiments, proactive (i.e. bolder and more explorative) individuals had longer feeding time and higher food intake than reactive individuals. In Experiment 1, proactive quails changed patches more frequently and had shorter mean patch residence time than reactive individuals, while the effects were not significant in Experiment 2. The quails reduced patch residence time along with feeding, and this trend was weakened in Experiment 2 which had longer inter-patch distance. CONCLUSIONS: The above results suggest that personality traits affect animals’ patch use, while the effects might be weakened with longer inter-patch distance. Our study highlights that animal personality should be considered when investigating animals’ foraging behaviours because individuals may not adopt the same strategy as previously assumed. Furthermore, the interaction between personality traits and inter-patch distances, which is related to movement cost and capacity of information gathering, should also be considered.
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spelling pubmed-104689022023-09-01 Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits Li, Chunlin Zhang, Xinyu Cheng, Lin Zhang, Baowei Zhang, Feng Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: The classic optimal foraging theory (OFT) predicts animals’ food patch use assuming that individuals in a population use the same strategy while foraging. However, due to the existence of animal personality, i.e. repeatable inter-individual differences and intra-individual consistency in behaviours over time and/or across contexts, individuals often exhibit different behavioural strategies, challenging the basic assumptions of the OFT. Here, we tested whether personality traits (boldness and exploration in open arena) of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica, 38 females and 34 males) influenced their patch use in two foraging experiments with different inter-patch distances (i.e. 2 m in Experiment 1 and 3 m in Experiment 2). RESULTS: The total feeding time and food intake of individuals did not differ between Experiment 1 and 2, but in both experiments, proactive (i.e. bolder and more explorative) individuals had longer feeding time and higher food intake than reactive individuals. In Experiment 1, proactive quails changed patches more frequently and had shorter mean patch residence time than reactive individuals, while the effects were not significant in Experiment 2. The quails reduced patch residence time along with feeding, and this trend was weakened in Experiment 2 which had longer inter-patch distance. CONCLUSIONS: The above results suggest that personality traits affect animals’ patch use, while the effects might be weakened with longer inter-patch distance. Our study highlights that animal personality should be considered when investigating animals’ foraging behaviours because individuals may not adopt the same strategy as previously assumed. Furthermore, the interaction between personality traits and inter-patch distances, which is related to movement cost and capacity of information gathering, should also be considered. BioMed Central 2023-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10468902/ /pubmed/37653456 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00510-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Li, Chunlin
Zhang, Xinyu
Cheng, Lin
Zhang, Baowei
Zhang, Feng
Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title_full Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title_fullStr Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title_full_unstemmed Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title_short Food patch use of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
title_sort food patch use of japanese quail (coturnix japonica) varies with personality traits
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10468902/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37653456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00510-2
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