Balance nature: important role of personality in ecosystems (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 06, 2022, 19:24 (691 days ago) @ David Turell

What different wolf personalities do:

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-wolf-personalities-wetlands.html

"To figure out how wolf personalities might be connected to wetland creation, the project team assessed the role of personality using data from eight pairs of wolves across six packs from 2019 to 2020. They compared the number of times wolves from the same pack, which lived in the same or similar habitats and conditions, attempted to ambush beavers and the number of times the wolves were successful at killing beavers.

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"The researchers found:

"There was significant variation in the amount of time pack members spent ambushing beavers and in the number of beavers killed by pack members.

"Some wolves killed 229% more beavers than other pack members and spent 263% more time ambushing beavers than other pack members.

"This large variation in hunting behavior between wolves in the same pack is evidence for personality-driven differences in wolf predation.

"'Wolves with strong beaver-killing personalities appear to be disproportionately responsible, relative to the wolf population as whole, for altering wetland creation and the associated ecological effects," said Gable.

"Wolves are unlikely to be alone in this capacity. There is good reason to believe other wildlife have personality differences that have different ecosystem impacts.

"For example, some cougars appear to have beaver-killing personalities and some American badgers are especially good at preying upon prairie dogs, which are ecosystem engineers in grasslands.

"More generally, the authors expect that predator personalities will impact ecosystems more substantially whenever and wherever predators kill species that are ecosystem engineers.

"'But do wolves that hunt beavers beget wolf packs with more beaver-hunting wolves? That is where this research gets even more interesting," said Bump.

"The presence of wolf personalities suggests wolf cultures may exist because personalities are a necessary precursor for cultural formation in animals."

Comment: Darwin used variation in his theory. This aspect of it certinly works.