Biological Sciences Masters Theses

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Personality and Behavioral Syndromes of the Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus fuscus
(North Dakota State University, 2018) Boyer, Amanda Marie
As the study of animal personality has significant expanded in the last decade, a growing amount of research has focused on the impacts of sociality and group dynamics on behavioral repeatability. The research presented here focused on examining personality in a captive colony of a common bat species, the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). Chapter 1 focused on calculating repeatability along common personality axes, as well as examining relationships between these axes (behavioral syndromes). High repeatabilities were observed for two behavioral axes (exploration and activity) and a significant correlation was found between these axes, confirming a common behavioral syndrome. Chapter 2 focused on examining if individuals exhibit reduced repeatability of behavior when regularly switching between social groups. We found little evidence for increased plasticity in regards to changing social group composition, indicating that animals have relatively fixed behavioral types, exhibiting limited plasticity despite the composition of their social group.