Into the wild: developing field tests to examine the link between elasmobranch personality and laterality

Pearson³

et al. 2018

Ecosphere

In many animal populations, individuals exhibit repeatable behavioral traits across a range of contexts, and similarly, individuals differ in ecological traits such as habitat use, home range sizes, growth rates, and mating success. However, links between an individual's positions on behavioral vs. ecological axes of variation remain relatively unstudied in the wild. In the course of fieldwork on a remote floodplain in tropical Australia, we quantified boldness and ecological traits in 86 free‐ranging (radio‐tracked) monitor lizards (Varanus panoptes). These large (up to 7 kg) lizards exhibited a spectrum of boldness, as reflected in correlated scores of responses to approach, handling, and novel prey. Bolder lizards had larger core home ranges and higher mating success and spent more time in areas of high predator abundance, and their seasonal regimes of predation‐induced mortality differed from those of shyer lizards. Thus, behavioral differences among lizards underpin much of the variation in ecological traits and individual fitness within this population. Analyses of ecology and microevolution in natural populations cannot afford to ignore the complex covariation between behavior, ecology, and evolution in the wild.

“…For 14 individuals that were captured and handled on two occasions, we assessed repeatability of struggling scores (and see Byrnes et al. , for a similar method for elasmobranchs).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, few behavioral studies have demonstrated personality differences in the wild (but see Byrnes et al. , May et al. ); yet validating behavioral traits with ecological (and physiological) data is pivotal to understanding the evolution of personality variation in natural populations (Réale et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ecological and life history correlates of boldness in free‐ranging lizards

Ward‐Fear

Pearson³

et al. 2018

Ecosphere

“…Repeatable individual behavioural traits such as boldness, activity, or sociability, for example, have now been widely demonstrated in teleosts (Budaev & Brown, 2011) and more recently in sharks (Byrnes et al, 2016b;Finger et al, 2017;Jacoby et al, 2014). Personality traits have been linked to the way individuals make decisions, which includes social behaviour decision-making (Raoult et al, 2017;Sih & Del Giudice, 2012;Trompf and Brown, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lack of social preference between unfamiliar and familiar juvenile Port Jackson sharksHeterodontus portusjacksoni

Pouca

Journal of Fish Biology

2019

Self Cite

This study investigated whether captive‐reared juvenile Port Jackson sharks Heterodontus portusjacksoni choose to aggregate and if familiarity is one of the mechanisms driving social preference. In a controlled binary‐choice experiment, juvenile sharks were given the option to associate or not with unfamiliar conspecifics, or to associate or not with familiar conspecifics. In neither group did juvenile H. portusjacksoni actively choose to associate with conspecifics, but familiarity decreased the proportion of time spent near a conspecific only during the initial phase of the experiment. Treatment (1 or 3 shoal mates), sex and size had no effect on aggregation behaviour. These findings suggest that familiarity is not a driver of social preferences in juvenile H. portusjacksoni, contrary to results in another shark species. Additionally, adult H. portusjacksoni form large aggregations during the breeding season and actively associate with familiar sex and size‐matched individuals, thus our results suggest the species undergoes an ontogenetic shift in social behaviour.

“…To measure the behavioral attributes of wild reptiles, researchers must adapt their scoring systems to the ecology of the species in question (Byrnes et al., 2016; Ward‐Fear et al., 2018). The four behavioral measures listed below are appropriate for assaying lace monitors along a shyness/boldness axis (see Results).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenically modified habitats favor bigger and bolder lizards

Pettit

Ward‐Fear

et al. 2021

Ecology and Evolution

Anthropogenic activities often create distinctive but discontinuously distributed habitat patches with abundant food but high risk of predation. Such sites can be most effectively utilized by individuals with specific behaviors and morphologies. Thus, a widespread species that contains a diversity of sizes and behavioral types may be pre‐adapted to exploiting such hotspots. In eastern Australia, the giant (to >2 m) lizard Varanus varius (lace monitor) utilizes both disturbed (campground) and undisturbed (bushland) habitats. Our surveys of 27 sites show that lizards found in campgrounds tended to be larger and bolder than those in adjacent bushland. This divergence became even more marked after the arrival of a toxic invasive species (the cane toad, Rhinella marina) caused high mortality in larger and bolder lizards. Some of the behavioral divergences between campground and bushland lizards may be secondary consequences of differences in body size, but other habitat‐associated divergences in behavior are due to habituation and/or nonrandom mortality.