DOI: 10.5061/dryad.8969jr1
title: Data from: Evidence for personality conformity, not social niche specialization in social jays

description: Animal personality traits are defined as consistent individual differences
 in behavior over time and across contexts. Occasionally this inflexibility
 results in maladaptive behavioral responses to external stimuli. However,
 in social groups inflexible behavioral phenotypes might be favored as this
 could lead to more predictable social interactions. Two hypotheses seek to
 describe the optimal distribution of personality types within groups. The
 social niche specialization hypothesis states that individuals within
 groups should partition social roles, like personality types, to avoid
 conflict. Whereas the conformity hypothesis states that individuals should
 assort with conspecifics of similar personality. However no research so
 far has compared these hypotheses using data from wild animal systems. We
 tested boldness in the wild on two species with different social systems,
 the Mexican Jay and California Scrub-Jay. We found support for the
 conformity hypothesis over the social niche specialization hypothesis
 because individuals within groups of the social species had more similar
 personalities, and consequently there was a statistically significant
 group effect. The most likely mechanism for this conformity is social
 learning of behaviors through development, but more explicit research on
 this is needed.
description: Novel Object
 datafileRaw data collected
 during novel object trials on both species. Columns represent: Trial- 1st
 or 2nd trial; Group- territory identifier; Treatment- CON (rock in middle)
 and EXP (duck in middle); ID- jay's unique color band code; Level-
 peanuts touching the central object are level 3, the middle peanuts are
 level 2, the furthest peanuts are level 1; Distance- in meters, how close
 each jay comes to the central object; Location- side of the duck (T=tail,
 L=left, R=right, F=front) combined with level ID; Sec- seconds in to the
 trial that jay approached; Latency- the number of seconds until each
 separate approach; Response.time- the number of seconds before the first
 approach; Species- CASJ (California Scrub-Jay) and MEJA (Mexican
 Jay).Novel
 Object.csvFlight initiation
 distance datafileRaw data collected
 during flight initiation distance assays on jays of both species. Columns
 represent: ID- jay's unique color band code; Group- territory
 identifier; BS?- whether FID was collected during the breeding season;
 Time- time of day; Trial- whether it was the jay's 1st, 2nd, etc.
 FID; Observer- identifier of research collecting the FID (1 represents the
 first author, other numbers are field assistants); FID- the number of
 meters (assessed by pacing) between observer's position when the jay
 flew, and the jay's location; Location- how high was the jay when
 first approached; Species- CASJ (California Scrub-Jay) and MEJA (Mexican
 Jay)Flight
 initiation distance.csvAssortment by
 personality in jays_RcodeR script used to
 manipulate, analyze, and visualize boldness data for both species. This
 provided code works with the two provided csv data
 files.