Data from: Early-life behavior, survival and maternal personality in a wild marsupial

Individual behavior varies for many reasons, but how early in life is such
variability apparent, and is it under selection? We investigated variation
in early-life behavior in a wild eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus
giganteus) population, and quantified associations of this behavior with
early survival. Behavior of young was measured while still in the pouch
and also as subadults, and we also monitored survival to weaning. We found
consistent variation between offspring of different mothers in levels of
activity at the pouch stage, in flight initiation distance as subadults,
and in subadult survival, indicating similarity between siblings. There
was no evidence of covariance between the measures of behavior at the
pouch young vs subadult stages, nor of the early-life behavioral traits
with subadult survival. However, there was a strong covariance between
offspring and mothers’ flight initiation distance (FID) tested at
different times. Further, of the total repeatability of subadult FID
(55.3%), more than two-thirds could be attributed to differences between
offspring of different mothers. Our results indicate that (i) behavioral
variation is apparent at a very early stage of development (still in the
pouch in the case of this marsupial); (ii) between-mother differences can
make up much of the repeatability of juvenile behavior (or ‘personality’);
and (iii) mothers and offspring exhibit similar behavioral responses to
stimuli, potentially indicating heritability of behavioral responses.
However, (iv) we found no evidence of selection via covariance between
early-life or maternal behavioral traits and juvenile survival in this
wild marsupial. Keywords: animal personality, maternal variance,
early-life behaviour and survival, macropods, multivariate Bayesian
statistics.