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Personality and density affect nest defence and nest survival in the great tit

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Abstract

Recent studies suggest that individual variation in behaviour of prey individuals may cause distinctive responses to nest predators and cooperation with conspecifics. We assessed individual differences during a novel object test and whether these responses were related to nest failure and survival of females during incubation. We additionally carried out experimental trials in natural field conditions using a stuffed pine marten, a principal nest predator, to test for a relationship between neophobia and mobbing predators. Our results show that antipredator responses of breeding great tits are dependent on their personality and personality type of neighbouring conspecifics. We found that neophilic individuals (those that rapidly resumed feeding of nestlings in the presence of a novel object) have an advantage over neophobic individuals (those that slowly resumed feeding of nestlings in the presence of a novel object) in their reproductive success, as measured in numbers of successful nests and of females that survived. Furthermore, neophilic-neophilic pairs exhibited stronger antipredator mobbing responses than neophobic-neophobic pairs. Results show that consistent individual differences in response against novel objects and antipredator behaviour are related, and that these responses are important predictors of nest failure in breeding great tits.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Marc Naguib and Raivo Mänd for the discussion and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Social Fund within the project ‘Support for the implementation of doctoral studies at Daugavpils University’ Nr.2009/0140/1DP/1.1.2.1.2/09/IPIA/VIAA/015 supported J.V.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standards

All animal manipulations reported therein comply with the current laws in Latvia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Systematic Biology, University of Daugavpils, 5401, Daugavpils, Latvia

    Jolanta Vrublevska, Tatjana Krama, Todd M. Freeberg & Indrikis A. Krams

  2. Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20024, Turku, Finland

    Markus J. Rantala

  3. Department of Environment Policy, Mykolas Romeris University, 08303, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Pranas Mierauskas

  4. Department of Psychology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

    Todd M. Freeberg

  5. Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, 51014, Tartu, Estonia

    Indrikis A. Krams

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  1. Jolanta Vrublevska
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  2. Tatjana Krama
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  4. Pranas Mierauskas
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  5. Todd M. Freeberg
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  6. Indrikis A. Krams
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Correspondence to Jolanta Vrublevska.

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Vrublevska, J., Krama, T., Rantala, M.J. et al. Personality and density affect nest defence and nest survival in the great tit. acta ethol 18, 111–120 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-014-0191-7

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