Effects of personality on territory defence in communication networks: a playback experiment with radio-tagged great tits

Abstract

Individuals often differ consistently in behaviour across time and contexts, and such consistent behavioural differences are commonly described as personality. Personality can play a central role in social behaviour both in dyadic interactions and in social networks. We investigated whether explorative behaviour, as proxy of personality of territorial male great tits (Parus major), predicts their own and their neighbours' territorial responses towards simulated intruders. Several weeks prior to playback, subjects were taken from the wild to test their exploratory behaviour in a standard context in the laboratory. Exploratory behaviour provides a proxy of personality along a slow -fast explorer continuum. Upon release, males were radio-tracked and subsequently exposed to interactive playback simulating a more or a less aggressive territorial intruder (by either overlapping or alternating broadcast songs with the subjects' songs). At the same time, we radio-tracked a neighbour of the playback subject. Male vocal responses during playback and spatial movements after playback varied according to male explorative behaviour and playback treatment. Males with lower exploration scores approached the loudspeaker less, and sang more songs, shorter songs and songs with slower element rates than did males with higher exploration scores. Moreover, neighbour responses were related to the explorative behaviour of the subject receiving the playback but not to their own explorative behaviour. Our overall findings reveal for the first time how personality traits affect resource defence within a communication network providing new insights on the cause of variation in resource defence behaviour.

Numerical assessment in the wild: insights from social carnivores

“…Fourth, as evidenced by our research on spotted hyenas, there is substantial individual variation in responsiveness to playbacks, with some individuals being consistently more vigilant in response to simulated calls of territorial intruders while others are consistently less vigilant, regardless of the number of individuals calling [15]. Individual personality has also been shown to influence the response of territorial male great tits to recordings of simulated intruders [109]. Males with lower exploration scores were less likely to approach the source of the sound than males with high exploration scores and sang more songs that were shorter and contained slower element rates than the songs of more exploratory males.…”

Effects of social conditions during early development on stress response and personality traits in great tits (Parus major)

“…Exploratory behavior is an established proxy for avian personality traits as it reflects consistent behavioral differences in a range of contexts and over time. In great tits exploratory behavior is linked, for instance, to boldness (Verbeek, Drent, & Wiepkema, 1994;van Oers, Klunder, & Drent, 2005), dominance and foraging (Marchetti & Drent, 2000;van Oers et al, 2004;Verbeek, Boon, & Drent, 1996), learning (Marchetti & Drent, 2000;Verbeek et al, 1994), song and territorial behavior (Amy, Sprau, de Goede, & Naguib, 2010;Naguib, Kazek, Schaper, van Oers, & Visser, 2010) as well as to reproduction, survival, and fitness (Both, Dingemanse, Drent, & Tinbergen, 2005;Dingemanse, Both, Drent, & Tinbergen, 2004;van Oers, Drent, Dingemanse, & Kempenaers, 2008). Assuming that relatively larger brood sizes provide an environment with more social stress and more competition, we predicted that nestlings from larger broods have a stronger stress response (Sapolsky, 1992).…”

You talkin’ to me? Interactive playback is a powerful yet underused tool in animal communication research

“…Researchers continue to use this approach in studies of songbird vocal interactions. For example, one study used interactive playback to nicely demonstrate that personality traits play a role in territorial behaviour and resource defence in male great tits [27].…”