Abstract
Across a range of species including humans, personality traits, or differences in behaviour between individuals that are consistent over time, have been demonstrated. However, few studies have measured whether these consistent differences are evident in very young animals, and whether they persist over an individual’s entire lifespan. Here we investigated the begging behaviour of very young cross-fostered zebra finch nestlings and the relationship between that and adult activity levels. We found a link between the nestling activity behaviour head movements during begging, measured at just five and seven days after hatching, and adult activity levels, measured when individuals were between three and three and a half years old. Moreover, body mass was found to be negatively correlated with both nestling and adult activity levels, suggesting that individuals which carry less body fat as adults are less active both as adults and during begging as nestlings. Our work suggests that the personality traits identified here in both very young nestlings and adults may be linked to physiological factors such as metabolism or environmental sources of variation. Moreover, our work suggests it may be possible to predict an individual’s future adult personality at a very young age, opening up new avenues for future work to explore the relationship between personality and a number of aspects of individual life history and survival.
Highlights
When the behaviour displayed by individuals in a population or species is characterised by both inter-individual variation and intra-individual consistency over time and/or context, this infers the existence of personality differences between individuals (Carere & Maestripieri, 2013; Reale et al, 2007)
We investigated whether very early nestling mechanical behaviours produced during begging are related to adult personality in the zebra finch, a well-used model system for the study of parental care and personality
This study is the first to compare behavioural traits exhibited during food begging with personality much later in life. We focused on those components of begging most likely to be indicative of general activity levels, namely tongue movements and head movements, and contrasted these with general activity levels measured in adults in a relatively low-stress environment, with a social partner in a familiar home cage
Summary
When the behaviour displayed by individuals in a population or species is characterised by both inter-individual variation and intra-individual consistency over time and/or context, this infers the existence of personality differences between individuals (Carere & Maestripieri, 2013; Reale et al, 2007). ‘Activity’ can be defined as the general activity level of an individual, usually measured in an environment that is not novel or risky to reduce interference with other personality traits such as exploration or boldness (Reale et al, 2007). Activity has often been shown to be repeatable when measured across lengths of time that make up a. Several studies have shown that activity is repeatable over different life stages from ontogeny to adulthood (Kanda, Louon & Straley, 2012)
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