Behavioral Syndromes Across Time and Space in a Long-Lived Turtle

Abstract

Behavioral syndromes are correlated behaviors across different contexts and are critical for understanding processes in the ecology and evolution of animal personality. To aid in this endeavor, there is a need to study syndromes in wild animals from understudied species over long timescales. We investigated behavioral syndromes in wild ornate box turtles (Terrapene ornata) across four distinct populations over four different years. We measured three behavioral traits (boldness, activity, and exploration) in controlled trials using standardized 10-min assays on 174 different turtles 314 times. Overall, turtles demonstrated consistent correlations between behavioral traits, indicating conserved behavioral syndromes in this species. A behavioral syndrome between activity and exploration was detected in every population in every year except for one in 2016, suggesting a strong conserved basis for these traits to covary. Correlations with boldness and other behavioral traits were also consistent, but their magnitude varied. At least two populations did not exhibit relationships in two different years, one population's syndrome strength changed from 1 year to the next, and another population exhibited a relationship in 1 year only. Boldness and activity were fully decoupled in one population, underscoring the significance of syndromes in coping with environmental variability for a long-lived ectothermic vertebrate. This is the first study to document behavioral syndromes along the boldness, activity, and exploration axes in a wild terrestrial turtle. Our results emphasize the need to preserve behavioral diversity while maintaining syndrome integrity alongside genetic and ecological diversity, which together will promote the conservation of ornate box turtles.