Abstract
Social interactions among individuals are often mediated through acoustic signals. If acoustic signals are consistent and related to an individual's personality, these consistent individual differences in signalling may be an important driver in social interactions. However, few studies in non-human mammals have investigated the relationship between acoustic signalling and personality. Here we show that acoustic signalling rate is repeatable and strongly related to personality in a highly social mammal, the domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica). Furthermore, acoustic signalling varied between environments of differing quality, with males from a poor-quality environment having a reduced vocalization rate compared with females and males from an enriched environment. Such differences may be mediated by personality with pigs from a poor-quality environment having more reactive and more extreme personality scores compared with pigs from an enriched environment. Our results add to the evidence that acoustic signalling reflects personality in a non-human mammal. Signals reflecting personalities may have far reaching consequences in shaping the evolution of social behaviours as acoustic communication forms an integral part of animal societies.
Highlights
Acoustic communication plays a central role in various aspects of animals’ life history from mate attraction and territory defence to parental care and anti-predator behaviour in many species [1]
As we did not assess personality before the pigs were placed in their respective environmental treatment groups, we investigated whether there was a difference in repeatability of behaviours between barren and enriched individuals
We investigated the relationship between injury score and both acoustic signalling rate and PR index score as injury score may provide some information about aggression in pigs [28]
Summary
Acoustic communication plays a central role in various aspects of animals’ life history from mate attraction and territory defence to parental care and anti-predator behaviour in many species [1]. Acoustic signals convey a wide range of information about the signaller, including their emotional, motivational. There is increasing interest in discovering how the social environment 2 affects the evolution and maintenance of consistent behavioural variation between individuals of the same species [5]. As acoustic signalling plays an integral role in interactions in animal societies, investigating vocalizations is relevant for answering questions about the effect of interactions on individual behavioural variation
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