Environment Analysis and Management Unit, Guido Tosi Research Group, Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, via J.H. Dunant, 3, 21100, Varese, Italy.
Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium.
Oecologia. 2021 May;196(1):65-76. doi: 10.1007/s00442-021-04901-2. Epub 2021 Apr 1.
Animal space use is affected by spatio-temporal variation in food availability and/or population density and varies among individuals. This inter-individual variation in spacing behaviour can be further influenced by sex, body condition, social dominance, and by the animal's personality. We used capture-mark-recapture and radio-tracking to examine the relationship between space use and personality in Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in three conifer forests in the Italian Alps. We further explored to what extent this was influenced by changes in food abundance and/or population density. Measures of an individual's trappability and trap diversity had high repeatability and were used in a Principal Component Analysis to obtain a single personality score representing a boldness-exploration tendency. Males increased home-range size with low food abundance and low female density, independent of their personality. However, bolder males used larger core-areas that overlapped less with other males than shy ones, suggesting different resource (food, partners) utilization strategies among personality types. For females, space use-personality relationships varied with food abundance, and bolder females used larger home ranges than shy ones at low female density, but the trend was opposite at high female density. Females' intrasexual core-area overlap was negatively related to body mass, with no effect of personality. We conclude that relationships between personality traits and space use in free-ranging squirrels varied with sex, and were further influenced by spatio-temporal fluctuations in food availability. Moreover, different personality types (bold-explorative vs. shy) seemed to adopt different space-use strategies to increase access to food and/or partners.
动物的空间利用受到食物可获得性和/或种群密度的时空变化的影响，并且在个体之间存在差异。这种空间行为的个体间差异可以进一步受到性别的影响、身体状况、社会优势以及动物的个性。我们使用捕获-标记-再捕获和无线电跟踪技术，研究了在意大利阿尔卑斯山的三片针叶林里，欧亚红松鼠（Sciurus vulgaris）的空间利用与个性之间的关系。我们进一步探讨了食物丰度和/或种群密度变化对这种关系的影响程度。个体的易捕性和陷阱多样性测量具有较高的可重复性，并在主成分分析中用于获得一个代表大胆-探索倾向的单一个性得分。在食物匮乏和低雌密度的情况下，雄性的家域大小会增加，而与个性无关。然而，与害羞的雄性相比，大胆的雄性使用更大的核心区域，与其他雄性的重叠较少，这表明不同的个性类型之间存在不同的资源（食物、伴侣）利用策略。对于雌性，空间利用-个性关系随着食物丰度的变化而变化，在低雌密度下，大胆的雌性比害羞的雌性使用更大的家域，但在高雌密度下则相反。雌性的同性核心区域重叠与体重呈负相关，与个性无关。我们的结论是，自由生活的松鼠的个性特征与空间利用之间的关系因性别而异，并受到食物可获得性的时空波动的进一步影响。此外，不同的个性类型（大胆探索型与害羞型）似乎采用不同的空间利用策略来增加获取食物和/或伴侣的机会。
