Boldness suppresses hoarding behavior in food hoarding season and reduces over-wintering survival in a social rodent

The "pace-of-life" syndrome (POLS) framework can encompass
multiple personality axes that drive important functional behaviours
(e.g., foraging behaviour) and that co-vary with multiple life history
traits. Food hoarding is an adaptive behaviour important for an
animal's adaptation to seasonal fluctuations in food availability.
However, the empirical evidence for the relationships between animal
personality and hoarding behaviour remains unclear, including its fitness
consequences in the POLS framework. In this study, the Mongolian gerbil
(Meriones unguiculatus), a social rodent, was used as a model system to
investigate how boldness or shyness is associated with food hoarding
strategies in the food hoarding season and overwinter survival or
reproduction at individual and group levels. The results of this study
showed that compared to shy gerbils, bold gerbils had a lower effort
foraging strategy during the food hoarding season and exhibited lower
overwinter survival, but bold–shy personality differences had no effect on
overwinter reproduction. These findings suggest that the personality of
the animal is a key factor that affects the foraging strategy during the
food hoarding season in Mongolian gerbils. Personality may be related to
energy states or the reaction to environmental change (e.g., predation
risk, food availability) in bold or shy social animals. These results
reflect animal life history trade-offs between "current versus future
reproduction" and "reproduction versus self-maintenance",
thereby helping Mongolian gerbils adapt to seasonal fluctuations in their
living environment.