Do personality and innovativeness influence competitive ability? An experimental test in the great tit

Competitive ability is a major determinant of fitness, yet why individuals vary in their ability to compete for resources is often unclear. Rather than simply reflecting inherent differences in the ability of individuals to reach an assumed optimum behavior quality, empirical evidence suggests that competitive ability may also reflect alternative strategies that arise because of correlations with other behaviors, such as innovativeness and personality. We examined experimentally how two behavioral traits - exploration of a novel environment (an index of the reactive-proactive personality axis) and performance in a novel lever pulling task (a measure of innovativeness) - were related to the outcomes of dyadic contests involving wild-caught great tits. Dyads were then allowed to compete freely at a feeder before being exposed to a novel string-pulling task. Although we found no significant relationship between exploration behavior or innovativeness in isolation and competitiveness, indivi...