Estimating the long-term repeatability of food-hoarding behaviours in an avian predator

Food-hoarding behaviour is widespread in the animal kingdom and enables predictable access to food resources in unpredictable environments. Within-species, consistent variation among individuals in food-hoarding behaviours may indicate the existence of individual strategies, as it likely captures intrinsic differences in how individuals cope with risks (e.g. starvation, pilferage). Using 17 years of data, we estimated the long-term repeatability of 10 food-hoarding behaviours in a population of Eurasian pygmy owls (Glaucidium passerinum), a small avian predator subject to high temporal fluctuations in its main prey abundance. We found low repeatability in the proportion of shrews and the average prey mass stored for both sexes while females were moderately repeatable in the mass and the number of preys stored. These two pairs of behaviours were tightly correlated among-individuals and might represent two different sets of individual strategies to buffer against starvation risks. Whether...食物贮藏行为在动物界广泛存在，可使个体在不可预测的环境中稳定获取食物资源。在同一物种种内，个体间食物贮藏行为的稳定差异或许暗示了个体策略的存在，因为这类差异很可能反映了个体应对饥饿、盗食等风险的内在差异。本研究依托17年的观测数据，对花头鸺鹠（Glaucidium passerinum）种群的10种食物贮藏行为的长期重复性进行了估算。花头鸺鹠是一种小型鸟类捕食者，其主要猎物的丰度存在剧烈的时间波动。研究发现，两性个体在鼩鼱占比与贮藏猎物平均质量这两项行为上的重复性较低；而雌性个体在贮藏猎物的质量与数量上表现出中等程度的重复性。这两组行为在个体间呈现紧密关联，或代表了两类不同的用于缓冲饥饿风险的个体策略。Whether...