Data from: Repeatable and heritable behavioural variation in a wild cooperative breeder

Quantifying consistent differences in behaviour among individuals is vital
to understanding the ecological and evolutionary significance of animal
personality. To quantify personality, the phenotypic variation of a
behavioural trait is partitioned to assess how it varies among
individuals, which is also known as repeatability. If pedigree data are
available, the phenotypic variation can then be further partitioned to
estimate the additive genetic variance and heritability. Assessing the
repeatability and heritability of personality traits therefore allows for
a better understanding of what natural selection can act upon, enabling
evolution. In a natural population of facultative cooperatively breeding
Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) on Cousin Island, a lack of
breeding vacancies forces individuals into different life-history
strategies, and these differences in reproductive state could generate
behavioural differences among individuals in the population. We used this
population to estimate the repeatability of 4 behavioural traits (novel
environment exploration, novel object exploration, obstinacy/struggle
rate, and escape response), and narrow-sense heritability (of behavior,
h2B; behavior minus observer variance; and personality), and evolvability,
of the repeatable behavioural traits. We also tested for an
among-individual correlation between the repeatable traits. We found that,
compared to estimates in other study species, the exploratory behaviours
were moderately repeatable (0.23–0.37), there was a positive
among-individual correlation (0.51) between novel environment and novel
object exploration, and that novel environment exploration was moderately
heritable (0.17; h2B was low as it includes observer variance). This study
further clarifies the additive genetic variance available for selection to
act upon in this cooperatively breeding bird.