A Preliminary Study On The Personality And Social Network Of Fawns Of Pere David's Deer(Elaphurus Davidianus)

In wild ungulates,the proportion of time spent between anti-predator behavior and foraging behavior is an important trade-off strategy.The purpose of anti-predator behavior is to detect potential threats of predators in the environment and defend against attacks,in order to facilitate the increase of fitness for individual and offspring.However,anti-predation behavior carries costs:the time spent watching for and guarding leads to decreased food intake.The differences in the trade-offs can be described by the parameters of foraging behavior and vigilance behavior,however,the differences in the trade-offs are not well explained.One possibility is that differences in these strategies reflect differences in personalities,such as exploration and boldness.Recent studies have shown that ecology and evolution explain the differences in animal personalities.However,few studies have explained how differences in animal personality affect the parameters of foraging behavior and vigilance behavior.To investigate whether feeding strategies are related to personality differences,12 calves of Pere David's deer in Dafeng national nature reserve were tested in this study.The first part,novel food test,provided familiar and novel food in the familiar environment,recording the feeding parameters of the calves to the two kinds of food.In addition,the experiment provided three different novel food to explore whether there were differences in the foraging strategies of individual on different food.In the second part,the noise sources were played and the vigilance behavior parameters were recorded.Three different noise sources were used--the bark of a dog,the honk of a car and the roar of a tiger.The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were differences in elk's responses to different noise sources.The results showed that there were significant differences in individual foraging strategies when faced with novel food.There were also significant differences in the feeding strategies adopted in the face of different food.At the same time,there were significant differences in the foraging strategies of different individuals in the noise sources.Social network analysis(SNA)is a kind of research method that integrates graph theory and mathematical model to study the relationship between individuals,their positions in the network and multiple social networks.SNA is not only a set of science and technology,but also a kind of methodology related to network.This methodology holds that each individual does not exist independently,but is connected by various information,behavior,spatial distribution and other factors.In the study of social network of animals,the main research directions include the study of the impact of ecological factors on the social structure of groups or individual behavior,as well as the study of group movement and decision-making.In the study of non-human primates,it mainly involves the distribution of different interactions in the group,centrality characteristics and group structure characteristics.It also includes studies of how diseases and parasites spread within groups.However,in these research directions,cubs or sub-adults are excluded in the scope of social network analysis.Because cubs and sub-adults tend to follow their mothers in wild.In this study,the subjects are 25 sub-adult elk from the Dafeng Pere David's deer National Nature Reserve,separated from their mothers.Then several analysis has been done:position of each individual in the social networks,if gender will affect the role of individuals in a social network,social network in the factional distribution and network structure of the whole network.In results,using four parameters,the degree of node,betweenness centrality and eigenvector centrality and clustering coefficients to evaluate the individual position in the network,and found that the node degree has a significant correlation with betweenness centrality,show that the individual owning the most activities with others is in the center of this social network.In addition,gender had no effect on individuals' position in this group.Through cluster analysis,there were two main cliques in this social network,and the individuals in each clique were more closely related.