Animal Personality

One of the topics widely studied in our research group is personality – stable inter-individual differences in behaviour of individuals. We focus on several aspects of personality, for example, repeatability of behaviour, which shows how stable behaviour of individuals is and which factors may influence this stability. Another aspect we are interested in is whether personality characteristics remain consistent throughout the ontogeny of an individual – from juvenile age to adulthood (Šimková et al. 2017). In addition, we focus on links between personality and other characteristics, for example, approach towards potentially dangerous prey (Exnerová et al. 2010), hierarchy status, cognitive traits, or ecological requirements of a species (Žampachová et al. 2017a). Correlations between various behavioural traits (which is one of the conditions of personality) may vary among species or within a single species among various populations, depending on the combination of traits that benefit each personality type in given conditions (Exnerová et al. 2015). Our model species are especially muroid rodents (Muridae), pigeons (Columba livia), various tit species (Paridae), leopard geckos (Eublepharis macularius), and snakes from the family Boidae. For many species we adapt classic or invent new behavioural tests (Exnerová et al. 2010, Šimková et al. 2017, Žampachová et al. 2018b).

Šimková, O., Frýdlová, P., Žampachová, B., Frynta, D., & Landová, E. (2017). Development of behavioural profile in the Northern common boa (Boa imperator): Repeatable independent traits or personality?. PloS one, 12(5), e0177911.

Žampachová, B., Kaftanová, B., Šimánková, H., Landová, E., & Frynta, D. (2017a). Consistent individual differences in standard exploration tasks in the black rat (Rattus rattus). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 131(2), 150.

Žampachová B., Landová, E., & Frynta, D. (2017b). Methods for measuring mammalian personalities: In which animals and how accurately can we quantify it?. Lynx, series nova, 48.

Exnerová, A., Ježová, D., Štys, P., Doktorovová, L., Rojas, B., & Mappes, J. (2015). Different reactions to aposematic prey in 2 geographically distant populations of great tits. Behavioral Ecology, 26(5), 1361-1370.

Exnerová, A., Svádová, K. H., Fučíková, E., Drent, P., & Štys, P. (2010). Personality matters: individual variation in reactions of naive bird predators to aposematic prey. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 277(1682), 723-728.

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