Amin Bawan, Jennings Dómhnall J, Norman Alison, Ryan Andrew, Ioannidis Vasiliki, Magee Alice, Haughey Hayley-Anne, Haigh Amy, Ciuti Simone
Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour, School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.
Behav Ecol. 2022 Aug 9;33(5):1025-1035. doi: 10.1093/beheco/arac072. eCollection 2022 Sep-Oct.
Although it is widely acknowledged that animal personality plays a key role in ecology, current debate focuses on the exact role of personality in mediating life-history trade-offs. Crucial for our understanding is the relationship between personality and resource acquisition, which is poorly understood, especially during early stages of development. Here we studied how among-individual differences in behavior develop over the first 6 months of life, and their potential association with resource acquisition in a free-ranging population of fallow deer (). We related neonate physiological (heart rate) and behavioral (latency to leave at release) anti-predator responses to human handling to the proportion of time fawns spent scanning during their first summer and autumn of life. We then investigated whether there was a trade-off between scanning time and foraging time in these juveniles, and how it developed over their first 6 months of life. We found that neonates with longer latencies at capture (i.e., risk-takers) spent less time scanning their environment, but that this relationship was only present when fawns were 3-6 months old during autumn, and not when fawns were only 1-2 months old during summer. We also found that time spent scanning was negatively related to time spent foraging and that this relationship became stronger over time, as fawns gradually switch from a nutrition rich (milk) to a nutrition poor (grass) diet. Our results highlight a potential mechanistic pathway in which neonate personality may drive differences in early-life resource acquisition of a large social mammal.
尽管人们普遍认为动物个性在生态学中起着关键作用，但目前的争论焦点在于个性在调节生活史权衡中的具体作用。对我们理解至关重要的是个性与资源获取之间的关系，而这一关系目前还知之甚少，尤其是在发育早期阶段。在此，我们研究了行为上的个体差异在小鹿出生后的前6个月中是如何发展的，以及它们与自由放养的黇鹿种群中资源获取的潜在关联。我们将新生小鹿对人类处理的生理（心率）和行为（释放时离开的潜伏期）反捕食反应与小鹿在出生后的第一个夏天和秋天用于扫视周围环境的时间比例联系起来。然后，我们研究了这些幼鹿在扫视时间和觅食时间之间是否存在权衡，以及这种权衡在它们出生后的前6个月中是如何发展的。我们发现，捕获时潜伏期较长的新生小鹿（即冒险者）用于扫视周围环境的时间较少，但这种关系仅在秋季小鹿3至6个月大时存在，而在夏季小鹿仅1至2个月大时不存在。我们还发现，用于扫视的时间与用于觅食的时间呈负相关，并且随着时间的推移这种关系变得更强，因为小鹿逐渐从营养丰富的（奶）饮食转向营养较差的（草）饮食。我们的研究结果突出了一条潜在的机制途径，新生小鹿的个性可能通过这条途径驱动大型群居哺乳动物在生命早期资源获取上的差异。
