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Determinants, selection and heritability of docility in wild eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus)

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Abstract

Many behavioural traits show important inter-individual phenotypic and genetic variation despite strong potential selection that should reduce this variability. Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in environmental conditions has been proposed to maintain such variation but empirical evidences supporting this hypothesis are still scarce for behavioural traits. Here, we analysed the repeatability and the ecological and individual factors that influence the expression of docility across different environmental contexts in wild eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus) studied over a period of 10 years. We also estimated the heritability of docility and the patterns of viability selection acting on this trait for adults and juveniles. Docility was moderately repeatable among various contexts and was positively affected by age, was higher in males than that in females, was higher during the fall and decreased with population density. Heritability of docility was low at 0.17. We found disruptive selection for the survival of adults only, individuals more or less docile than average having a higher survival. Our study confirms that docility is both phenotypically and genetically variables and that disruptive selection might maintain the variability in this trait.

Significance statement

Documenting the factors allowing the maintenance of phenotypic and genetic variation of behavioural traits within natural populations is a central objective in ecology and evolution. Here, we studied a wild eastern chipmunk population over 10 years and recorded docility, a personality trait, on both juveniles and adults. We showed that docility was repeatable and that it was also heritable and influenced by different individual and environmental factors. Importantly, we also found that disruptive viability selection was acting on adult docility independently of environmental variations. Our results show that docility is both phenotypically and genetically variable and that patterns of selection acting on this trait can maintain personality heterogeneity across temporally varying environmental conditions in the wild.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Murray M. Humphries, Fanie Pelletier, Patrick Bergeron and Pierre-Olivier Montiglio for their contribution to this project. We also want to thank the Ruiter Valley Land Trust and Nature Conservancy of Canada for allowing us to conduct this research on their lands. We thank two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this manuscript and all field assistants, coordinators and students who have helped to collect data in the field. This research was funded by a team grant from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) to DR, DG, M.M. Humphries and F. Pelletier; by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) discovery grants to DR, DG as well as to M.M. Humphries and F. Pelletier; and by Canada Research Chair funds to DR and F. Pelletier.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1, Canada

    Étienne St-Hilaire & Dany Garant

  2. Département des Sciences Biologiques, UQAM, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Denis Réale

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  1. Étienne St-Hilaire
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  2. Denis Réale
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  3. Dany Garant
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Correspondence to Dany Garant.

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Ethical standards

Animals were captured and handled in compliance with the Canadian Council on Animal Care, under the approval of the Université de Sherbrooke Animal Ethics Committee (protocol number: DG2011–01-Université de Sherbrooke).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by A. I. Schulte-Hostedde

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St-Hilaire, É., Réale, D. & Garant, D. Determinants, selection and heritability of docility in wild eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 71, 88 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-017-2320-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-017-2320-6

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