Active crocodiles are less sociable

Cameron J. Baker; Barbara Class; Ross G. Dwyer; Craig E. Franklin; Hamish A. Campbell; Terri R. Irwin; Céline H. Frère

doi:10.1098/rstb.2022.0528

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Active crocodiles are less sociable

Cameron J. Baker, Barbara Class, Ross G. Dwyer, Craig E. Franklin, Hamish A. Campbell, Terri R. Irwin and Céline H. Frère

Royal Society of London. Philosophical Transactions B. Biological Sciences, Vol.379(1912), pp.1-11

2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0528

PMCID: PMC11449168

PMID: 39230456

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Abstract

Acoustic Telemetry

Animal Personality

Behavioural Syndrome

Double Hierarchical Model

Research Articles

Sociability

How animals move and associate with conspecifics is rarely random, with a population’s spatial structure forming the foundation on which the social behaviours of individuals form. Studies examining the spatial–social interface typically measure averaged behavioural differences between individuals; however, this neglects the inherent variation present within individuals and how it may impact the spatial–social interface. Here, we investigated differences in among-individual (co)variance in sociability, activity and site fidelity in a population of wild estuarine crocodiles, Crocodylus porosus, across a 10-year period. By monitoring 118 crocodiles using coded acoustic transmitters and an array of fixed underwater receivers, we discovered that not only did individual crocodiles repeatably differ (among-individual variation) in each behaviour measured but also in how consistently they expressed these behaviours through time (within-individual variation). As expected, crocodile activity and sociability formed a behavioural syndrome, with more active individuals being less sociable. Interestingly, we also found that individuals that were either more sociable or displayed greater site fidelity were also more specialized (lower within-individual variation) in these behaviours. Together, our results provide important empirical evidence for the interplay between spatial, temporal and social individual-level behavioural variation and how these contribute to forming behavioural niches. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The spatial–social interface: a theoretical and empirical integration’.

Details

Title: Active crocodiles are less sociable
Authors: Cameron J. Baker (Corresponding Author) - The University of Queensland
Barbara Class (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Ross G. Dwyer (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Craig E. Franklin (Author) - The University of Queensland
Hamish A. Campbell (Author) - Charles Darwin University
Terri R. Irwin (Author) - Australia Zoo
Céline H. Frère (Author) - The University of Queensland
Publication details: Royal Society of London. Philosophical Transactions B. Biological Sciences, Vol.379(1912), pp.1-11
Publisher: The Royal Society Publishing
Date published: 2024
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0528
ISSN: 1471-2970
PMID: 39230456; PMC11449168
Copyright note: © 2024 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The raw and processed data, along with all of the R code supporting the analyses reported in this article are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad/cfxpnvxcg.
Grants: Investigating movement, distribution, abundance and diet to support management objectives for threatened riverine predators in Northern Australia, LP140100222, Australian Research Council (Australia, Canberra) - ARC
Organisation Unit: School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991062898802621
Output Type: Journal article

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