Does Animal Personality Affect Movement in Habitat Corridors? Experiments with Common Voles (Microtus arvalis) Using Different Corridor Widths

• Published in: Animals
• Main Authors: Gabriele Joanna Kowalski, Volker Grimm, Antje Herde, Anja Guenther, Jana A. Eccard
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2019
• Subjects: activity; animal personality; wildlife corridors; habitat connectivity; individual differences; rodents; The Corridor; Microtus arvalis
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9060291

Animal personality may affect an animal’s mobility in a given landscape, influencing its propensity to take risks in an unknown environment. We investigated the mobility of translocated common voles in two corridor systems 60 m in length and differing in width (1 m and 3 m). Voles were behaviorally phenotyped in repeated open field and barrier tests. Observed behavioral traits were highly repeatable and described by a continuous personality score. Subsequently, animals were tracked via an automated very high frequency (VHF) telemetry radio tracking system to monitor their movement patterns in the corridor system. Although personality did not explain movement patterns, corridor width determined the amount of time spent in the habitat corridor. Voles in the narrow corridor system entered the corridor faster and spent less time in the corridor than animals in the wide corridor. Thus, landscape features seem to affect movement patterns more strongly than personality. Meanwhile, site characteristics, such as corridor width, could prove to be highly important when designing corridors for conservation, with narrow corridors facilitating faster movement through landscapes than wider corridors.