Personality

Individual personalities predict social behaviour in wild networks of great tits (Parus major)

Animal personality is an exciting field of research. We have an increasing understanding of how personality traits such as aggression or exploration behaviour correlate, forming what we call behavioural syndromes. Great tits are amongst the best studied species for the reactive-proactive axis, with estimates for heritability, developmental trajectories, and temporal and spatial variation. Exploration behaviour and boldness is related to dispersal behaviour, extra pair copulations and mate formation, and affects how individuals weigh the predation/starvation trade off. However little is known about how personality relates to social behaviour and structure in great tits. Do birds of differing personality also differ in their social network position? Do associations between individuals of similar or opposing personality type differ in their strength, or in their stability over time? More intriguingly, does personality interact with social structure, affecting the way individuals distribute into groups?

I measured exploration behaviour in Great tits using established methods, where birds are temporally caught and testing in captivity before being released back into the wild. All birds in our system are PIT tagged, and I measured the social network of the wild population of over 1000 birds for the winter of 2011-2012 as part of the social network group at the E.G.I., Oxford. We placed 65 feeders in a stratified grid across the 400ha Wytham woods. Each feeder was fitted with PIT-tag reading antennae and a data-logger, and opens for two days a week to record a snapshot of spatial-temporal flocking behaviour. The social network is analysed using gaussian mixture models.

Great tit being scored for exploration behaviour (a personality trait)

One of our social network feeders