Animal personality or temperament refers to individual differences in behaviour that are repeatable over time and across contexts.Personality has been linked to life-history traits, energetic traits and fitness, with implications for the evolution of behaviour.Personality has been quantified for a range of taxa (e.g., fish, songbirds, small mammals) but, so far, there has been little work on personality in bats, despite their diversity and potential as a model taxon for comparative studies.
We used a novel environment test to quantify personality in little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) and assess the short-term repeatability of a range Measuring of behaviours.We tested the hypothesis that development influences values of personality traits and predicted that trait values associated with activity would increase between newly volant, pre-weaning young-of-the-year PVC FREE DRYERBALLS (YOY) and more mature, self-sufficient YOY.We identified personality dimensions that were consistent with past studies of other taxa and found that these traits were repeatable over a 24-hour period.Consistent with our prediction, older YOY captured at a fall swarming site prior to hibernation had higher activity scores than younger YOY bats captured at a maternity colony, suggesting that personality traits vary as development progresses in YOY bats.Thus, we found evidence of short-term consistency of personality within individuals but with the potential for temporal flexibility of traits, depending on age.