Personality as a Predictor of Time-Activity Budget in Lion-Tailed Macaques (Macaca silenus).

Abstract

Simple SummaryTime-activity budgets describe how animals divide their day into various behaviours and activities, e.g., time spent foraging or resting. Activity budgets can serve as crucial indicators of energy intake and expenditure, providing better knowledge of a species’ lifestyle. The conventional trend has been to explore group-level time-activity budgets; however, individuals may also vary in their time-activity budgets (e.g., one individual foraging more than another), with the influencing mechanisms still poorly understood. We propose that animal personality, a behavioural and cognitive profile that makes one individual different from another, may explain why individuals vary in their time-activity budgets. We used a multi-method approach comprised of behavioural observations and experiments to assess the personality traits of lion-tailed macaques. The observed traits were used to predict individual time-activity budgets, broadly categorised into food-related, active, and resting behaviours. We then discuss the significance of this novel approach in light of lion-tailed macaque ecology, conservation, and welfare. Time-activity budget, i.e., how a population or an individual divides their day into various behaviours and activities, is an important ecological aspect. Existing research primarily focused on group-level time-activity budgets, while individual variations have only been reported recently. However, little is known about how consistent inter-individual differences or personalities influence time-activity budgets. We examined the personalities of lion-tailed macaques (Macaca silenus) and investigated their influence on individual time-activity budgets. The resulting personality traits, namely persistence, sociability, affiliation, and anxiety, were used to predict the three broad categories of the time-activity budget—food-related, active, and resting behaviours. We found that persistence and sociability positively predicted the time spent being active. Food-related behaviours were positively predicted by persistence, while anxiety was found to influence them negatively. The time spent resting was negatively predicted by persistence. We did not find an effect of affiliation on the time-activity budgets. We discuss these findings in light of the ecology of lion-tailed macaques. Our study highlights the importance of a novel approach that uses animal personality traits as predictors of individual time-activity budgets and offers insights regarding the use of personality assessments in conservation and welfare activities.