Influences of Personality on Ungulate Migration and Management

Abstract

Loss of migratory behavior in ungulates often occurs with habituation to people to cause several challenges for wildlife managers, particularly in protected and urban areas. Aversive conditioning to increase ungulate wariness toward people could be an important tool for managing wildlife conflicts, but it is frequently thwarted by variation in responsiveness among individuals, an aspect of personality that is currently little understood by managers. In our paper, we describe the potential role of personality in the ecological progression associated with habituation, loss of migration, and human-wildlife conflict in ungulates. We do so by (a) synthesizing our prior work on two populations of wild elk (Cervus canadensis) living in national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, (b) using it to articulate a conceptual model to explain how anthropogenic changes in landscapes favor bolder individuals, and (c) showing how targeted use of aversive conditioning could limit the advantages to bold individuals that promote residency. Our review showed how bolder elk, defined by a combination of seven separate personality metrics on a bold-shy continuum, are three times more likely to forego migration, but are also quicker to learn by association, whether via the provision or cessation of aversive conditioning. Differences in personality may relate to cognitive flexibility, which we measured with limb use preferences, to imbue bolder elk with more rapid responses to changing environments. In our conceptual model, we show how four ecological drivers comprised by interactions with humans, predators and conspecifics, in addition to changes in forage, favor bolder elk that are more likely to adopt a resident migratory tactic. We also explain how bold personalities could result from behavioral flexibility, genetic differences, or gene-environment interactions, each of which could be moderated by frequency-dependent payoffs to individuals. We suggest that managers could limit the prevalence of bold, resident ungulates by targeting bolder individuals with active and specific aversive conditioning, while minimizing anthropogenic food sources in predator refugia. A better understanding of personality in wildlife could support more proactive strategies to limit habituation and encourage migration and other keystone behaviors in changing landscapes.

The Cognitive Ecology of Animal Movement: Evidence From Birds and Mammals

“…In some cases, leaders may be responsible for immense changes in collective migratory behavior. For example, in elk (Cervus canadensis), bold individuals are three time less likely to migrate than shy individuals from the same population (Found and St. Clair, 2016), likely because they better adapt to changing environments (Found and St. Clair, 2019). Another dimension of personality, sociability, can also produce leaders.…”

A World for Reactive Phenotypes

“…The diamond color corresponds to individual phenotypic coping style. elk (Cervus canadensis) habituated to human presence in two Canadian national parks (Banff and Jasper) were shown to be bolder and more dominant than migrants elk (Found and St. Clair, 2019). One reason could be that this was because dominant individuals were residents.…”

“…One reason could be that this was because dominant individuals were residents. But this observation could also be the result of high contact with humans in the parks, where some individuals are, or become bold to exploit new food sources or due to habituation (Found and St. Clair, 2019), a case we specifically discuss below (see HIREC relaxing selection pressure section). Interestingly, these individuals also exhibited characteristics of reactive phenotypes (i.e., high cognitive flexibility), which could support the second hypothesis where initially shy individuals become bold following human contact.…”

Intraspecific trait variation in personality‐related movement behavior promotes coexistence

“…Movement may be the most promising candidate for studying feedback from individual behavior to species coexistence at the community level because individual movement characteristics along various movement types, including dispersal (Cote et al 2010) or migration (Found and St. Clair 2019), covary with BTs. More recently, the relevance of BTs for spatial interactions within and between species during daily foraging movement has been recognized (Spiegel et al 2015, Schirmer et al 2019, 2020, Harris et al 2020).…”