Winter feeding preferences and personality vary with territory characteristics in wild great tits

Differences in habitat characteristics experienced during rearing associate with variation in a range of behavioral phenotypes such as exploratory behavior, foraging behavior and food preference. The habitat-dependent selection hypothesis predicts that animals develop behavioral characteristics fitted to their rearing environment. Yet, little is known about how habitat characteristics during rearing shape how animals face winter conditions and adjust their winter foraging behavior. The aim of this study was to explore how fine-scale rearing habitat characteristics associate with exploratory behavior, food selection and foraging performance during winter. For this, we measured habitat characteristics during the breeding season in territories of wild great tits (Parus major), and tested first-year juvenile birds that fledged from these territories for exploratory and foraging behavior at feeders during winter. We found evidence that faster explorers were raised in territories with lower q..., , , # Winter feeding preferences and personality vary with territory characteristics in wild great tits:

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# Authors:

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Eva Serrano-Davies1, Nina Bircher2, Bernice Sepers1,2, Kees van Oers1,2.

1. Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen, Netherlands.
2. Behavioral Ecology Group, Wageningen University and Research (WUR), Wageningen, Netherlands.

* Correspondence: E. Serrano-Davies, Department of Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW),Droevendaalsesteeg 10, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands. E-mail address: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

# Description of the Data and file structure

The data files have the following data:

Feeders.fledlings2018.csv:

Tag_Number is the individual number identification for each bird (factorial)

Exploratory_score is the sum of all the movements recorded during the first 2 of the novel environment test, corrected for the day the test was conducted

peanuts is the tot...