Data from: Behavioral syndromes across time and space in a long-lived turtle

Behavioral syndromes are correlated behaviors across different contexts
and are critical for understanding processes in the ecology and evolution
of animal personality. To aid in this endeavor, there is a need to study
syndromes in wild animals from understudied species over long timescales.
We investigated behavioral syndromes in wild ornate box turtles (Terrapene
ornata) across four distinct populations over four different years. We
measured three behavioral traits (boldness, activity, and exploration) in
controlled trials using standardized 10-min assays on 174 different
turtles 314 times. Overall, turtles demonstrated consistent correlations
between behavioral traits, indicating conserved behavioral syndromes in
this species. A behavioral syndrome between activity and exploration was
detected in every population in every year except one in 2016, suggesting
a strong conserved basis for these traits to covary. Correlations with
boldness and other behavioral traits were also consistent but their
magnitude varied. At least two populations did not exhibit relationships
in two different years, one population’s syndrome strength changed from
one year to the next, and another population exhibited a relationship in
one year only. Boldness and activity were fully decoupled in one
population, underscoring the significance of syndromes in coping with
environmental variability for a long-lived ectothermic vertebrate. This is
the first study to document behavioral syndromes along the boldness,
activity, and exploration axes in a wild terrestrial turtle. Our results
emphasize the need to preserve behavioral diversity while maintaining
syndrome integrity alongside genetic and ecological diversity, which
together will promote the conservation of ornate box turtles.