To boldly go: methods to quantify personality in mustelids

Abstract

Animal personality has wide-reaching impacts on the individual fitness and life history traits of many wild vertebrates. Recent work has highlighted personality not only as a driver of sample bias during wildlife population monitoring, but also as a potential underlying mechanism influencing the success of population translocations and invasive species control. Mustelids are the largest family in the order Carnivora and are of particular interest to conservation, with members on the IUCN red list of threatened species and the list of the world's most disruptive invasive species. Despite the widespread implications of personality for wildlife research, conservation and management, there exists little to no personality work in the mustelid literature. To address this gap, we used the stoat, Mustela erminea, as a model species to evaluate three assays to quantify personality in a wild-caught mustelid tested under captive conditions. Our intent is to highlight the importance of personality for wildlife conservation and management, and to provide robust assays for mustelid researchers and managers to modify and utilize.