How wolf personalities can alter wetlands

Wolf personality can change the environment. They can according to the latest research from the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

Wolves can alter the creation of wetlands by killing animals.

Observations from the field showed that some wolves were better at ambushing and killing animals than others. The researchers thought that individual wolves were to blame.

Dog owners think their dogs have personality. Tom Gable is a researcher and project leader with the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

A successful ambushing personality requires that wolves wait for food. The lead author of the study said that certain individual wolves wait more often and longer than other wolves.

The project team assessed the role of personality using data from eight pairs of wolves over the course of a year. They compared the number of times wolves from the same pack tried to ambush and kill beavers and the number of times they succeeded.

The researchers were able to control a lot of the variables that might affect hunting behavior.

The researchers were able to find something.

• 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 personality appear to be disproportionately responsible, relative to the wolf population as a whole, for altering wetlands creation and the associated ecological effects."

Wolves are likely to be a group. Other wildlife have personality differences that have different impacts on the environment.

Some American badgers are particularly good at preying on prairie dogs, which are an important part of the ecology of the grassland environment.

The authors expect that predator personality will have a significant impact on the ecosystems whenever and wherever they are killed.

Is it possible for wolves to beget wolf packs with more hunting wolves? The research gets even more interesting there.

The presence of personality in wolves suggests they may have a culture.

It will take long-term data to answer that question.

More information: Joseph Bump et al, Predator personalities alter ecosystem services, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (2022). DOI: 10.1002/fee.2512