ArticleOecologia2015
Personality affects the foraging response of a mammalian herbivore to the dual costs of food and fear.
Article in Oecologia, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 67 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Response and Plasticity of a Cleaning Mutualism Following Short Term Reductions in Habitat Availability.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A Systematic Review of the Relationship Between Host Personality Traits and Parasitic Infection.Biology · 2026Review
- Intraspecific and environmental variation mediate seed finding effectiveness among scatter-hoarding small mammals.Ecology · 2026Article
- Integrating small mammal personality and population abundance into forest regeneration predictions for a managed, mixed species forest in Maine, USA.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Are Large-Scale Differences in Temperature and Reindeer Management Regime Affecting the Quality of Reindeer's Summer Forage?Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Optimising Control Device Luring Strategies for Invasive Predator Control: A Modelling Approach.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Odor cues rather than personality affect tadpole deposition in a neotropical poison frog.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Validation of an Enzyme Immunoassay to Measure Faecal Glucocorticoid Metabolites in Common Brushtail Possums (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Behavioural drivers of survey bias: interactive effects of personality, the perceived risk and device properties.Oecologia · 2021Article
- The effects of personality on survival and trappability in a wild mouse during a population cycle.Oecologia · 2021Article
- Among-individual differences in foraging modulate resource exploitation under perceived predation risk.Oecologia · 2020Article
- Food shopping under risk and uncertainty.Learning and motivation · 2020Article
- Bigger doesn't mean bolder: behavioral variation of four wild rodent species to novelty and predation risk following a fast-slow continuum.Frontiers in zoology · 2020Article
- The balancing act of foraging: mammalian herbivores trade-off multiple risks when selecting food patches.Oecologia · 2017Article
- Selection of food patches by sympatric herbivores in response to concealment and distance from a refuge.Ecology and evolution · 2016Article
- To eat, or not to eat: a phantom decoy affects information-gathering behavior by a free-ranging mammalian herbivore.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Patch quality and habitat fragmentation shape the foraging patterns of a specialist folivore.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Predators attack and plants defend, so herbivores face the dilemma of how to eat enough without being eaten. But do differences in the personality of herbivores affect the foraging choices of individuals? We explored the ecological impact of personality in a generalist herbivore, the brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). After quantifying personality traits in wild individuals brought temporarily into captivity, we tested how these traits altered foraging by individuals when free-ranging in their natural habitat. To measure their responses to the dual costs of predation risk and plant toxin, we varied the toxin concentration of food in safe foraging patches against paired, non-toxic risky patches, and used a novel synthesis of a manipulative Giving-Up-Density (GUD) experiment and video behavioural analysis. At the population level, the cost of safe patches pivoted around that of risky patches depending on food toxin concentration. At the individual level, boldness affected foraging at risky high-quality food patches (as behavioural differences between bold and shy), and at safe patches only when food toxin concentration was low (as differences in foraging outcome). Our results ecologically validate the personality trait of boldness, in brushtail possums. They also reveal, for the first time, a nuanced link between personality and the way in which individuals balance the costs of food and fear. Importantly, they suggest that high plant defence effectively attenuates differences in foraging behaviour arising from variation in personality, but poorly defended plants in safe areas should be differentially subject to herbivory depending on the personality of the herbivore.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.