Moose personality

Animal personality affects an animal's behavior and its response to the surrounding environment. Evidence of personality has been found across taxa, from invertebrates to mammals. But the topic remains scarcely documented in cervids (i.e., deer). This is a group providing important ecological, cultural, and economic services and disservices for humanity, including meat supply and browsing damage.

The project will conduct the first investigation of personality in wild moose (Alces alces). Using GPS and acceleration data we will characterize consistent inter-individual personality differences observable in individuals' activity patterns and space use.

We also want to find out whether female moose with different personalities use different strategies to protect their calves from predators.

We aim to apply these findings to different scenarios in natural resource management, suggesting alternative, personality-based wildlife control strategies. We believe that advancing knowledge of personality in cervids will establish it as a key feature for understanding their ecological interactions and ecosystem processes, as well as their interactions with different human interests. In turn, this will help develop better-aimed management strategies, of particular importance in anthropogenic landscapes such as the Swedish forests.

In addition to researchers from SLU, the following researchers are involved in the project: Aimee Tallian (NINA) and Barbara Zimmermann (INN).