An emerging focus of behavioral ecology is to determine the driving forces behind animal personalities. While numerous theories have been proposed to explain these behavioral variations, empirical studies on this subject remain lacking. Here, we test ecological theory by studying the combined effects of physiological condition and habitat quality on individual mud crab, Panopeus herbstii, behavior across the spawning season (early spawning season and two months after). We assessed the boldness, energy stores, and reproductive effort of crabs collected across 10 oyster reefs of low and high quality using laboratory observations and subsequent dissections. Crab boldness was significantly dependent on the interaction between habitat quality and season. While crab behavior remained relatively constant on healthy reefs, crabs on degraded reefs exhibited a nearly twofold increase in boldness during the late spawning season, approximating the boldness of crabs on healthy reefs. This behavioral change corresponds to a seasonal shift in crab energy store content and likely represents a switch in the primary driving force of crab behavior. During the early season crab boldness was positively correlated to short-term stores, while later in the season crab boldness was negatively correlated to long-term stores. Our data suggest that behavior is driven by predation pressure and refuge availability during the early spawning season, but afterwards depends on replenishing energy stores used for reproduction. These findings support ecological theory and also provide new insight into the stability of behavioral drivers.
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