Abstract
Animal personalities can influence social interactions among individuals, and thus have major implications for population processes and structure. Few studies have investigated the significance of the social context of animal personalities, and such research has largely focused on the social organization of nonterritorial populations. Here we address the question of whether exploratory behaviour, a well-studied personality trait, is related to the social structure of a wild great tit, Parus major, population during the breeding season. We assayed the exploration behaviour of wild-caught great tits and then established the phenotypic spatial structure of the population over six consecutive breeding seasons. Network analyses of breeding proximity revealed that males, but not females, show positive assortment by behavioural phenotype, with males breeding closer to those of similar personalities. This assortment was detected when we used networks based on nearest neighbours, but not when we used the Thiessen polygon method where neighbours were defined from inferred territory boundaries. Further analysis found no relationship between personality assortment and local environmental conditions, suggesting that social processes may be more important than environmental variation in influencing male territory choice. This social organization during the breeding season has implications for the strength and direction of both natural and sexual selection on personality in wild animal populations.
Highlights
Animal personalities can influence social interactions among individuals, and have major implications for population processes and structure
While empirical studies exploring the relationship between social structure and personality in wild populations have demonstrated that personality can be an important phenotypic trait influencing social organization, such studies have largely been restricted to foraging groups (Aplin et al, 2013; Best et al, 2015; Carter et al, 2015; Croft et al, 2009)
We used data from a wild great tit population spanning 6 years to examine whether individuals show spatial assortment by personality type during the breeding season
Summary
Animal personalities can influence social interactions among individuals, and have major implications for population processes and structure. Further analysis found no relationship between personality assortment and local environmental conditions, suggesting that social processes may be more important than environmental variation in influencing male territory choice This social organization during the breeding season has implications for the strength and direction of both natural and sexual selection on personality in wild animal populations. Complete behavioural plasticity might be expected to be the optimum strategy, individuals are typically limited in their range of behavioural expression, with variation observed in the population (Sih et al, 2004) These interindividual behavioural differences, which are consistent over time and correlated across different contexts, are referred to as behavioural syndromes or personality traits (Wolf & Weissing, 2012). We hypothesized that birds may demonstrate positive assortment by personality with respect to their choice of breeding location
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