Abstract
Animal personality is defined as behavior that is consistent across time and context. Ecological and evolutionary pressures might exert sexually dimorphic effects on personality traits. In this study, variations in docility and exploratory behaviors of male and female plateau zokor (Eospalax baileyi) in two populations from different geographical sites were quantified during their breeding season, using bag and open field test. We observed significant repeatability of behaviors in the bag and open field test, except for sniffing behavior in zokors from TZ site. We found that sex influences the personality traits of plateau zokors more than geographical variation in both the bag and open field test. Females had a higher docility than males in the bag test. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of considering plateau zokors’ sex and personality traits when assessing their fitness, behavior, or suitability for behavioral future research work.
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Data and associated calculation tools are available from the first author upon reasonable request (yaobhgsau@163.com).
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Funding
This work was supported by the Industrial Support Program Project (2022CYZC-47) of Gansu Provincial Education Department, and Science and Technology Support Project of Forestry and Grassland Bureau of Gansu Province (LCJ2021020), the High-end Foreign Experts Recruitment Plan Project (G2022042008L), and Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Ecological Genomics (QHEG-2019–06).
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BY: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing—original draft preparation, writing—review and editing. IH: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, writing—review and editing. YK, YT, and DZ: investigation, data curation. JS: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition.
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The Animal Ethics Committee of Gansu Agricultural University approved the experimental procedure, and the local authorities approved our research (GAU-LC-2018–014). Institutional guidelines for the use of animals were followed.
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Yao, B., Hegab, I.M., Kang, Y. et al. Underground environment increases the differentiation of personality traits between male and female plateau zokors (Eospalax baileyi). acta ethol 26, 21–30 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-023-00414-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-023-00414-8