How Animals’ Personalities Can Shape Ecosystems

I am so glad there is a lot of research going on to look at individuality of each animal instead of bucketing them as a species or worse just as animals. 

There are zero similarities in character between Max and Neo although both are chocolate lab; the similarities get even worse between Fluffy and Garph. 

I do see occasional flickers of similarities between Fluffy (cat) and Max. I think it's because she grew up around Max and mimicked him. I see heaven on earth when I see Max in her :-) 

Another study here: 

In reality, each individual animal consumes and disperses a different proportion of seeds, making some individuals more mutualistic than others. One implication of this is that some individuals may be more important than others when it comes to seed dispersal (from a conservation standpoint). In this paper, researchers explore how personality factors influence the dispersal behavior of deer mice, seeking to understand the relationship between an individual’s personality traits and their place on the antagonistic-mutualistic continuum.

To carry out their study, the researchers trapped deer mice in an experimental forest in Maine. They marked each mouse and tested them for personality traits including boldness, anxiety, docility, and activity level. From there, mice were given access to seed stations with a mix of white pine seeds, red oak acorns, and beech seeds. The seed stations were dusted with fluorescent powder so researchers could track seed dispersal routes, and the seeds were painted with fluorescent paint and marked for later identification. Researchers later cross-checked the dispersal routes and seeds with video footage of the seed stations to learn which seeds were taken by which mice. They assessed whether each individual seed interaction was mutualistic (meaning the seed was dispersed alive and intact) or antagonistic (meaning the mouse consumed the seed or stored it below ground where germination was unlikely to happen). 

The results were as follows:

• Out of 934 observed seed interactions by tagged deer mice, the researchers were able to determine the outcome of 532 seeds. 349 of these observations involved white pine seeds, 135 involved beech seeds, and 48 involved red oak acorns. 
• On average, mice were more antagonistic than mutualistic toward all three seeds.
• For red oak seed interactions, an individual’s timidness predicted the individual’s antagonism. Specifically, bolder individuals were more mutualistic toward red oak seeds, meaning they were more likely to remove and disperse them either on or below the surface. 

For white pine and beech seed interactions, bolder individuals were more antagonistic, though mutualism was more strongly predicted by body condition (calculated using body mass and the scaled-mass index) and forest type. Specifically, individuals with higher body condition tended to be more antagonistic.

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Understanding the impact of individual animals’ personality types on their mutualistic behavior is important for a number of reasons. As human activities alter natural environments, it is vital to understand the potential impact a certain environmental change can have, and certain environmental changes may favor particular personality types in animals. For example, bolder mice are more likely to venture into open areas in search of food, which means that tree clearing may disproportionately affect them. This presents another factor humans must consider before encroaching on the environment. 

What’s more, conservation decisions are usually made at the species level. However, if only a minority of individuals are doing the majority of mutualistic behaviors (for example, if only the boldest mice are spreading most of the seeds of a given tree species), these mice might be considered “keystone individuals” for conservation projects. For example, previous research has demonstrated that bolder, more active individuals tend to be removed from environments at higher rates from hunting and fishing; understanding how these individuals impact the environment can increase our understanding of the consequences of such activities. While more research is needed on this topic, the study offers another reason why it’s important to value animals for their individual traits rather than their species membership alone.