Data from: Early-life behavior, survival and maternal personality in a wild marsupial

Individual behavior varies for many reasons, but how early in life is such variability apparent, and is it under selection? We investigated variation in early-life behavior in a wild eastern grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) population, and quantified associations of this behavior with early survival. Behavior of young was measured while still in the pouch and also as subadults, and we also monitored survival to weaning. We found consistent variation between offspring of different mothers in levels of activity at the pouch stage, in flight initiation distance as subadults, and in subadult survival, indicating similarity between siblings. There was no evidence of covariance between the measures of behavior at the pouch young vs subadult stages, nor of the early-life behavioral traits with subadult survival. However, there was a strong covariance between offspring and mothers' flight initiation distance (FID) tested at different times. Further, of the total repeatability of subadult FID (55.3%), more than two-thirds could be attributed to differences between offspring of different mothers. Our results indicate that (i) behavioral variation is apparent at a very early stage of development (still in the pouch in the case of this marsupial); (ii) between-mother differences can make up much of the repeatability of juvenile behavior (or 'personality'); and (iii) mothers and offspring exhibit similar behavioral responses to stimuli, potentially indicating heritability of behavioral responses. However, (iv) we found no evidence of selection via covariance between early-life or maternal behavioral traits and juvenile survival in this wild marsupial. Keywords: animal personality, maternal variance, early-life behaviour and survival, macropods, multivariate Bayesian statistics.