Abstract
Individual differences in behavioural traits influence habitat choice, and in turn, differences in used habitats shape different behavioural tendencies through plasticity. Here, I investigated the relationship between personality and microhabitat use in a free-living population of the clonal gecko Lepidodactylus lugubris. The study site is a small beachfront forest facing two environments with contrasting levels of human disturbance. I conducted a mark-recapture survey to assess the geckos’ spacing pattern and evaluated their boldness and exploration scores in the laboratory. The geckos exhibited a small range of movement and a high consistency in their perch height. Boldness was related to two microhabitat features, but exploration was not. Relatively shy geckos were found in trees near the roadside and on low branches, whereas relatively bold geckos were found on both the beachside and the roadside and on low to high branches. These patterns suggest that geckos in high-disturbance microhabitats may have frequently experienced artificial stimuli and become shy. However, the present results cannot exclude the possibility that individual differences are caused by other factors and that different personality types prefer and settle in different microhabitats. Although the actual mechanisms are unclear, my findings highlight that behaviour-related habitat use emerges even in clonal animals.
Significance statement
Individuals within conspecifics show different spacing patterns and different behavioural tendencies. If clonal animals live in a spatially diverse environment, it is predicted that different microhabitats may gradually shape different personality types through developmental plasticity. Here, I investigated the association between the personality of clonal geckos and their microhabitat use in different levels of human disturbance. In contrast to the prediction, both juveniles and adults showed a similar pattern of boldness-related microhabitats; relatively shy individuals were found in putatively high-disturbance sites. This result suggests that the association between boldness and microhabitats is not gradually formed through a long-time scale but is likely generated within their early ontogenetic stage.
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Data availability
The dataset generated or analysed during this study is included in a supplementary information file.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to A. Mori for meaningful comments on and discussion of my work and for reviewing the manuscript and providing an accommodation near the field site. I would like to thank C. Barnett for improving the language of the manuscript and Y. Kadota for providing information about the focal population. I also express my appreciation to two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments that helped to improve the manuscript. Several members of the Laboratory of Ethology, Kyoto University, encouraged me with helpful comments.
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The present study was carried out in compliance with the guidelines of the Animal Care and Use Committee of Kyoto University (approval number of Animal Experimental Protocol: H-2507, H-2607 and H-2707). The field survey was conducted with the permission of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Okinawa Prefecture. Field survey and experimental procedures were designed to minimise stress and harm to subjects.
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Sakai, O. Behavioural tendencies associated with microhabitat use in a clonal gecko species living in the wild. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 73, 64 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-019-2679-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-019-2679-7