State-dependent decisions in long-term fasting king penguins, Aptenodytes patagonicus, during courtship and incubation
Using an automatic identification and weighing system, we investigated changes in adult body mass in relation to reproductive behaviour during courtship and incubation in free-living king penguins. Despite stressful nutritional conditions and variability of fast length, the majority of pairs incubated successfully by accumulating large body reserves before fasting, which provided flexibility in fasting strategies. […]
Seasonality, sociality, and reproduction: Long-term stressors of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta)
Fecal glucocorticoid (fGC) concentrations are reliable, non-invasive indices of physiological stress that provide insight into an animal’s energetic and social demands. To better characterize the long-term stressors in adult members of a female-dominant, seasonally breeding species – the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) – we first validated fecal samples against serum samples and then examined the […]
Personality matters: Consistency of inter-individual variation in shyness-boldness across non-breeding and pre-breeding season despite a fall in general shyness levels in farmed American mink (Neovison vison)
Individuals of the same species vary consistently in their behaviour across time and context, and this is often referred to as animal personality. In this study, we investigate animal personality based on the definition of personality traits as underlying dispositional factors, which are linked to biological internal factors that are stable and perhaps heritable. Although […]