Integration of animal personality with in situ anti-predator training

Data from manuscript entitiled Integration of animal personality with in situ anti-predator training

Abstract of manuscript: Anti-predator training aims to train naïve animals about the predators they will face upon release into an unfamiliar environment. There has been mixed success of anti-predator training as a tool, with little implementation in wild contexts, i.e., in situ. In situ applications of anti-predator training could benefit from incorporating animal personality, allowing for more individualised analysis of success, or as additional variables for analysis with other measures of concern for conservationists. In New Zealand, many threatened bird species can only persist on predator-free offshore islands, or on the mainland in sanctuaries where there are high levels of invasive mammalian predator control (termed ‘mainland island sanctuaries’). Yet some individuals are exposed to novel mammalian predators when they disperse beyond mainland island sanctuary perimeters. As such, mainland island sanctuaries are an excellent case study for testing new methods of in situ anti predator training. At Zealandia, a mainland island sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand, we subjected a population of 21 toutouwai (Petroica longipes) to an in situ antipredator training program that was also designed to be used as a method for quantifying personality. While the anti-predator training protocol was not successful in eliciting the desired behavioural changes in toutouwai, we were able to robustly quantify the personality traits of exploration and boldness during training. Moreover, an individual's exploration score predicted the change in their vigilance behaviour after training. By contrast, an individual's boldness score was not related to their vigilance behaviour, or any other behaviour. These results contradict the expectation from the broader personality literature that boldness should be associated with a test that elicits risk-taking. Overall our study provides a proof-of-concept, demonstrating that personality can be incorporated within other behavioural tools in ways that may help conservation practitioners to understand the factors that contribute to the failure of behavioural interventions.

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