DOI: 10.5061/dryad.r3g5s
title: Data from: Integrating thermal physiology within a syndrome: locomotion, personality and habitat selection in an ectotherm

description: 1. Physiology and temperature can both have a profound influence on
 behaviour and metabolism. Despite this, thermal physiology has rarely been
 considered within the animal personality framework, but could be an
 inherent mechanism maintaining consistent individual differences in
 behaviour, particularly in species that need to thermoregulate (i.e.
 ectotherms). 2. Here, we present evidence for a thermal-behavioural
 syndrome and detail how it is linked to variation in habitat selection in
 an Australian lizard, the delicate skink, Lampropholis delicata. 3. We
 predicted that individuals would occur along a cold-hot continuum –
 analogues to the slow-fast continuum proposed by the pace-of-life
 hypothesis - whereby an individual’s placement along a thermal
 physiological axis will correspond with their placement along a
 personality axis. We first tested the thermal-behavioural syndrome by
 measuring the thermal preferences and optimal performance temperature of
 individual skinks and linking it to their activity, exploratory, social
 and boldness behaviours. 4. In line with our predictions, we found that
 individuals with a ‘hot’ thermal type performed optimally at higher
 temperatures, had faster sprint speeds and were more active, explorative
 and bold relative to ‘cold’ thermal types. 5. We then monitored each
 individual’s habitat selection within an artificial environment containing
 three microhabitats differing in their thermal characteristics. 6. We
 found that an individual’s thermal type mediated their use of habitat, in
 which ‘hot’ individuals utilised a hotter microhabitat more regularly than
 both ‘cold’ and ‘intermediate’ thermal types, suggesting that the
 thermal-behavioural syndrome could drive ecological niche partitioning in
 this species. 7. We envisage that the thermal-behavioural syndrome concept
 is likely to extend to other study systems, particularly to ectothermic
 organisms that rely heavily on behavioural thermoregulation to maintain
 optimal body temperature.
description: Michelangeli et al.
 Integrating thermal physiology within a syndrome
 Funct.EcologyThis data file contain 4
 tabs: The first tab contains data for the thermal characteristics (e.g
 Vmax) for each individual analysed in the corresponding paper. The second
 tab contains the behavioural data (e.g. activity) for each individual
 analysed in the corresponding paper. The third tab contains the raw
 habitat use data. This data contains information regarding each
 individuals microhabitat use on each day of their trial period, and also
 the total of proportion of time each individual spent in each microhabitat
 over the entire 3-day period. Finally, the fourth tab contains the ibutton
 data which are the temperature recordings taken in each microhabitat over
 the entire experimental period. Note - we have not provided the raw
 thermal characteristics data (i.e. the data involved in calculating the
 thermal variables). If you would like this data, please contact the
 corresponding author