Bruno Esattore

Throughout my research career, I have been involved in studies on different species of cervids (red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, sika deer), on topics including personality, agonistic and stress behaviour, prey-predator interactions, and animal welfare.

I earned my Ph.D in 2021 from the Czech University of Life Sciences of Prague (Czech Republic), in collaboration with the Institute of Animal Science of Prague. During this time, I mainly focused on agonistic and socio-positive interactions in a captive herd of red deer males, and their effects on testosterone and cortisol. Our main findings included application of both the “Social Buffering hypothesis” and the “Challenge hypothesis” to red deer, and showed that association with non-hostile companions had a stronger effect on hormonal concentrations (especially cortisol) than challenges from hostile animals. We also proved the occurrence of inter-individual differences in interaction-proneness among males and their persistence in time and across contexts, which led to the first investigation of personality in adult red deer males.

At the same time, I studied the antipredator strategies of fallow deer to avoid wolf predation in a coastal Mediterranean area, confirming temporal avoidance as the main strategy and the possibility to recur to increased vigilance; this would be tuned according to different factors, including the perceived risk and period of the year.

My postdoc research focuses on the characterization of moose personality based on space use and activity data, and how personality influences an individual chances to survive natural predators and human harvest, with the final goal of applying personality to forestry and moose management.