Development and structure of boldness and aggression in yellow-bellied marmots
Abstract
The ontogeny of personality traits is crucial to understanding their ecological significance but has not yet been well-studied. We examined the development of two traits that are commonly correlated in a syndrome, boldness and aggression, in a long-term study of yellow-bellied marmots (Marmot flaviventris). Using data collected since 2002, we quantified the repeatability and syndrome structure of these two traits in two age groups (juveniles and yearlings/adults). We quantified boldness through Flight Initiation Distance (FID) tests and aggression through two methods: (i) summing scored behaviors of individuals during trapping to create an index of aggression, and (ii) examining each trapping behavior individually. We found that aggression is a repeatable personality trait in both age classes, but that boldness is only a repeatable personality trait in yearlings/adults. We found no correlation between boldness and aggression in either group. We found that variance in aggression decreased from pups to yearlings/adults, and variance in boldness tended to increase. This suggests that personality traits can develop at different times and that these two traits may be under different directional selection during our study.
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References (61)
10 in Knowledge Hub, 51 external