Time budgets and sex differences in the Eurasian beaver

Abstract

The Eurasian beaver, Castor fiber, is one of the few obligate monogamous mammal species known, and nothing is known about the time budget of the mated pair. We investigated whether mated adult Eurasian beavers would display sex differences in time budgets. Using radiotracking, we obtained behavioural data on six mated pairs of adult beaver during 2000 and 2001 on two rivers in southeast Norway. Time budgets for males and females were compared in total and over the seasons, along with temperature data collected throughout the study. The three main behaviours of both males and females were travelling, foraging and being in the lodge, accounting for 92.0 and 93.2%, respectively, of each sex's overall time budgets. Time budgets did not differ between the sexes except that males allocated more time to travel. Time budgets for each sex did not vary with season, and water and air temperature data were positively correlated with time spent travelling for both sexes. These results support the hypothesis that male and female time budgets are similar, except for the time that males and females allocated to travel. We suggest that the similarities in behaviour result because parental care by both parents is essential to the successful rearing of offspring, leading to reduced behavioural sexual dimorphism; nevertheless, some differences still occur, perhaps relating to the male's indirect parental care. Copyright 2003 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.