Is risk taking during foraging a personality trait? A field test for cross-context consistency in boldness

During foraging, animals have to balance the risk of predation with the energy gain. The amount of risk animals take for a given resource depends on their energy budget but is expected also to vary between individuals of different personality types. We tested whether individuals of free-ranging grey mouse lemurs, Microcebus murinus, forage risk-sensitively and are consistent in their risk-taking behaviour. Furthermore, we tested whether boldness towards a novel object predicts risk taking in a foraging task. In a field experiment, we simulated low and high predation risk at artificial feeding sites. During focal platform observations, we quantified behaviours related to exploration and feeding for 36 individuals. Furthermore, we used a novel object test to quantify variation in boldness for 22 of these individuals. As predicted, grey mouse lemurs foraged risk-sensitively indicated by longer latencies to enter a feeding platform and to start feeding as well as by relatively longer feeding time compared to nonfeeding in high-risk situations. Individual differences in risk taking were repeatable and repeatability increased with increasing risk. Individual plasticity was higher for low-risk individuals providing field evidence for coping styles. There was no relationship between individual body condition and risk-taking behaviour. Finally, boldness measured in a novel object test was correlated with risk taking in a foraging task, providing a rare ecological validation for this personality trait. These results suggest that intrinsic individual differences in boldness need to be considered as an important source of variation when testing predictions of risk-sensitive foraging using optimality approaches. (C) 2012 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.