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Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore
BACKGROUND: Animal personality has emerged as a key concept in behavioral ecology. While many studies have demonstrated the influence of personality traits on behavioral patterns, its quantification, especially in wild animal populations, remains a challenge. Only a few studies have established a li...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9375925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35964147 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00333-6 |
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author | Stiegler, Jonas Lins, Alisa Dammhahn, Melanie Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie Ortmann, Sylvia Blaum, Niels |
author_facet | Stiegler, Jonas Lins, Alisa Dammhahn, Melanie Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie Ortmann, Sylvia Blaum, Niels |
author_sort | Stiegler, Jonas |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Animal personality has emerged as a key concept in behavioral ecology. While many studies have demonstrated the influence of personality traits on behavioral patterns, its quantification, especially in wild animal populations, remains a challenge. Only a few studies have established a link between personality and recurring movements within home ranges, although these small-scale movements are of key importance for identifying ecological interactions and forming individual niches. In this regard, differences in space use among individuals might reflect different exploration styles between behavioral types along the shy-bold continuum. METHODS: We assessed among-individual differences in behavior in the European hare (Lepus europaeus), a characteristic mammalian herbivore in agricultural landscapes using a standardized box emergence test for captive and wild hares. We determined an individuals’ degree of boldness by measuring the latencies of behavioral responses in repeated emergence tests in captivity. During capture events of wild hares, we conducted a single emergence test and recorded behavioral responses proven to be stable over time in captive hares. Applying repeated novel environment tests in a near-natural enclosure, we further quantified aspects of exploration and activity in captive hares. Finally, we investigated whether and how this among-individual behavioral variation is related to general activity and space use in a wild hare population. Wild and captive hares were treated similarly and GPS-collared with internal accelerometers prior to release to the wild or the outdoor enclosure, respectively. General activity was quantified as overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) obtained from accelerometers. Finally, we tested whether boldness explained variation in (i) ODBA in both settings and (ii) variation in home ranges and core areas across different time scales of GPS-collared hares in a wild population. RESULTS: We found three behavioral responses to be consistent over time in captive hares. ODBA was positively related to boldness (i.e., short latencies to make first contact with the new environment) in both captive and wild hares. Space use in wild hares also varied with boldness, with shy individuals having smaller core areas and larger home ranges than bold conspecifics (yet in some of the parameter space, this association was just marginally significant). CONCLUSIONS: Against our prediction, shy individuals occupied relatively large home ranges but with small core areas. We suggest that this space use pattern is due to them avoiding risky, and energy-demanding competition for valuable resources. Carefully validated, activity measurements (ODBA) from accelerometers provide a valuable tool to quantify aspects of animal personality along the shy-bold continuum remotely. Without directly observing—and possibly disturbing—focal individuals, this approach allows measuring variability in animal personality, especially in species that are difficult to assess with experiments. Considering that accelerometers are often already built into GPS units, we recommend activating them at least during the initial days of tracking to estimate individual variation in general activity and, if possible, match them with a simple novelty experiment. Furthermore, information on individual behavioral types will help to facilitate mechanistic understanding of processes that drive spatial and ecological dynamics in heterogeneous landscapes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-022-00333-6. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9375925 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93759252022-08-15 Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore Stiegler, Jonas Lins, Alisa Dammhahn, Melanie Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie Ortmann, Sylvia Blaum, Niels Mov Ecol Research BACKGROUND: Animal personality has emerged as a key concept in behavioral ecology. While many studies have demonstrated the influence of personality traits on behavioral patterns, its quantification, especially in wild animal populations, remains a challenge. Only a few studies have established a link between personality and recurring movements within home ranges, although these small-scale movements are of key importance for identifying ecological interactions and forming individual niches. In this regard, differences in space use among individuals might reflect different exploration styles between behavioral types along the shy-bold continuum. METHODS: We assessed among-individual differences in behavior in the European hare (Lepus europaeus), a characteristic mammalian herbivore in agricultural landscapes using a standardized box emergence test for captive and wild hares. We determined an individuals’ degree of boldness by measuring the latencies of behavioral responses in repeated emergence tests in captivity. During capture events of wild hares, we conducted a single emergence test and recorded behavioral responses proven to be stable over time in captive hares. Applying repeated novel environment tests in a near-natural enclosure, we further quantified aspects of exploration and activity in captive hares. Finally, we investigated whether and how this among-individual behavioral variation is related to general activity and space use in a wild hare population. Wild and captive hares were treated similarly and GPS-collared with internal accelerometers prior to release to the wild or the outdoor enclosure, respectively. General activity was quantified as overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) obtained from accelerometers. Finally, we tested whether boldness explained variation in (i) ODBA in both settings and (ii) variation in home ranges and core areas across different time scales of GPS-collared hares in a wild population. RESULTS: We found three behavioral responses to be consistent over time in captive hares. ODBA was positively related to boldness (i.e., short latencies to make first contact with the new environment) in both captive and wild hares. Space use in wild hares also varied with boldness, with shy individuals having smaller core areas and larger home ranges than bold conspecifics (yet in some of the parameter space, this association was just marginally significant). CONCLUSIONS: Against our prediction, shy individuals occupied relatively large home ranges but with small core areas. We suggest that this space use pattern is due to them avoiding risky, and energy-demanding competition for valuable resources. Carefully validated, activity measurements (ODBA) from accelerometers provide a valuable tool to quantify aspects of animal personality along the shy-bold continuum remotely. Without directly observing—and possibly disturbing—focal individuals, this approach allows measuring variability in animal personality, especially in species that are difficult to assess with experiments. Considering that accelerometers are often already built into GPS units, we recommend activating them at least during the initial days of tracking to estimate individual variation in general activity and, if possible, match them with a simple novelty experiment. Furthermore, information on individual behavioral types will help to facilitate mechanistic understanding of processes that drive spatial and ecological dynamics in heterogeneous landscapes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40462-022-00333-6. BioMed Central 2022-08-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9375925/ /pubmed/35964147 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00333-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis 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 Stiegler, Jonas Lins, Alisa Dammhahn, Melanie Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie Ortmann, Sylvia Blaum, Niels Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title | Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title_full | Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title_fullStr | Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title_full_unstemmed | Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title_short | Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
title_sort | personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9375925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35964147 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-022-00333-6 |
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