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Individual differences in the behavioural responses of meadow voles to an unfamiliar environment are not correlated with variation in resting metabolic rate
Author(s) -
Timonin M. E.,
Carrière C. J.,
Dudych A. D.,
Latimer J. G. W.,
Unruh S. T.,
Willis C. K. R.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of zoology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.915
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1469-7998
pISSN - 0952-8369
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00792.x
Subject(s) - biology , microtus , basal metabolic rate , variation (astronomy) , ecology , lizard , population , zoology , demography , endocrinology , sociology , astrophysics , physics
Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is highly variable between individuals within a single species and the relationship between body mass and RMR does not wholly explain this variability. One factor that could account for a portion of the residual variation is animal personality or consistent individual differences (CIDs) in behaviour, but no study has examined this relationship in a free‐living population of mammals. In this paper, we test for a relationship between RMR and CIDs in activity in live‐trapped meadow voles Microtus pennsylvanicus after controlling for the effect of body mass. We quantified the activity levels of voles both in an unfamiliar environment and for the first 2 min in the metabolic apparatus, and then measured RMR using open‐flow respirometry. As expected, there was a linear relationship between RMR and body mass, and we found strong evidence for repeatable differences in activity levels between individuals. However, contrary to the hypothesis, we did not identify a significant correlation between CIDs in behaviour and RMR after controlling for body mass. Our results suggest that, at least within species, higher activity levels may not require a greater investment in energetically demanding tissues or increased capacity for processing of energy. Alternatively, if a relationship exists, our inability to detect it may reflect a weak behavioural signal in noisy RMR data that are influenced by many factors. Our results could also reflect an artefact of individual responses to stress or a sampling bias towards more exploratory individuals in animals captured by live‐trapping.