DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ns1rn8px1
title: Winter feeding preferences and personality vary with territory characteristics in wild great tits

description: Differences in habitat characteristics experienced during rearing
 associate with variation in a range of behavioral phenotypes such as
 exploratory behavior, foraging behavior and food preference. The
 habitat-dependent selection hypothesis predicts that animals develop
 behavioral characteristics fitted to their rearing environment. Yet,
 little is known about how habitat characteristics during rearing shape how
 animals face winter conditions and adjust their winter foraging behavior.
 The aim of this study was to explore how fine-scale rearing habitat
 characteristics associate with exploratory behavior, food selection and
 foraging performance during winter. For this, we measured habitat
 characteristics during the breeding season in territories of wild great
 tits (Parus major), and tested first-year juvenile birds that fledged from
 these territories for exploratory and foraging behavior at feeders during
 winter. We found evidence that faster explorers were raised in territories
 with lower quality-related habitat characteristics. In addition, fast
 exploring fledglings visited the feeders significantly more (total
 visits). Moreover, the rearing environment, via caterpillar availability
 and tree species composition, determined diet selection during winter in
 first year birds. These results show support for the habitat-dependent
 selection hypothesis, since exploratory behavior as well as food
 preferences during winter associate with habitat features of the rearing
 territories during development. This pattern can be caused either by the
 kinds of foods prevalent at these sites or because of intrinsic individual
 differences. Further experiments are needed to disentangle these two.
description: # Winter feeding preferences and personality vary with territory
 characteristics in wild great tits: --- # Authors: --- Eva
 Serrano-Davies1, Nina Bircher2, Bernice Sepers1,2, Kees van Oers1,2. 1.
 Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Wageningen,
 Netherlands. 2. Behavioral Ecology Group, Wageningen University and
 Research (WUR), Wageningen, Netherlands. * Correspondence: E.
 Serrano-Davies, Department of Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of
 Ecology (NIOO-KNAW),Droevendaalsesteeg 10, 6708 PB Wageningen, The
 Netherlands. E-mail address:
 [E.Serrano@nioo.knaw.nl](mailto:E.Serrano@nioo.knaw.nl) # Description of
 the Data and file structure The data files have the following data:
 Feeders.fledlings2018.csv: Tag_Number is the individual number
 identification for each bird (factorial) Exploratory_score is the sum of
 all the movements recorded during the first 2 of the novel environment
 test, corrected for the day the test was conducted peanuts is the total
 number of visits to the peanuts feeder by each individual bird
 (unit:visit) sunf_seeds is the total number of visits to the sunflower
 seeds feeder by each individual bird (unit:visit) Totalvisits is the total
 number of visits to the the feeders by each individual bird (unit:visit)
 Nºfeeders is the total number of feeders visited by each individual bird
 (unit:feeder) Nºlocs is the total number of feeder locations visited by
 each individual bird (unit:location) Habitat_type is the category given to
 the great tits territories, categorized as A ‘mixed’or B ‘deciduous’
 Caterpillar_Peakwidth is the number of days where the caterpillar biomass
 is above 1 g m-2 day-1 (unit:day)