A behavioral syndrome of competitiveness in a non-social rodent

Animals compete for limited resources and the outcome of intraspecific competition should be determined by individual variation in behavioral traits, such as aggressiveness, and dominance status. Consistent among-individual differences in behavior likely contribute to competitiveness and predispose individuals to acquire specific dominance ranks. In a step towards better understanding these functional links, we studied trait integration into behavioral syndromes, using 26 captive male bank voles (Myodes glareolus). We repeatedly assessed boldness in an emergence test, exploration in an open-field test, aggressiveness in staged dyadic encounters, and the among-individual correlations between these behaviors. We further related these personality traits to dominance rank, from quantifying urine marking value (UMV), as marking in bank voles is related to dominance rank. We found repeatable variations in boldness, exploration, aggressiveness, and UMV, which were correlated at the among-indiv..., Study animals
 
We conducted this study on captive animals from July-February of 2021 and 2022 in the animal facilities of the Animal Ecology Group in Potsdam (Germany). Study animals were male bank voles (Myodes glareolus) captured from the wild in a small forest patch near Potsdam (Germany)(n = 20) or born in captivity (n = 6) as F1 of wild-caught parents. Prior to the experiments, all animals spent 3 to 5 months in the laboratory and were sexually mature. Voles were housed in standard polycarbonate cages (type III and type IV) provided with wood shavings and hay as bedding, cardboard rolls as shelter, and a running disk for enrichment. Water and food pellets (Ssniff, NM, V 1244-0) were available ad libitum. 
 
Personality assessment
 
Emergence test and open-field test
 
We tested 26 males twice in two established behavioral tests to quantify among-individual differences in activity, exploration, and boldness (Mazza et al 2019, Schirmer et al 2019). A circular arena (100 cm diameter ..., , # Data from: A behavioral syndrome of competitiveness in a non-social rodent

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dncjsxm61](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dncjsxm61)

## Description of the data and file structure

\# Data from: A behavioral syndrome of competitiveness in a non-social rodent

\[Access this dataset on Dryad]([https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dncjsxm61](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dncjsxm61))

The dataset contains four excel files of data from behavioral assessment of and one excel file of body metrics of male bank voles. All datasets have a “data” tab for the data and a “labels” tab explaining the data that can be found under the column names in the “data” tab. The individual identification “id” is the same across all files. The file names “emergence”, “open-field”, “SDE”, and “UMV” correspond to the assays explained in detail below. The “body metrics” dataset corresponds to the “body condition” section explained below. The body condition is also present in the SDE dataset. Sta...