The association between personalities, alternative breeding strategies and reproductive success in dunnocks

Although consistent between‐individual differences in behaviour (i.e. animal personality) are ubiquitous in natural populations, relatively few studies have examined how personalities influence the formation of social relationships. Yet, behavioural characteristics of both sexes might be key when it comes to pair‐bond formation, and cooperation with partners to successfully rear offspring. We here use a wild population of dunnocks (Prunella modularis) to first investigate whether individuals mate nonrandomly (i.e. assortative mating) with regard to four behavioural traits—flight‐initiation distance (FID), provisioning, activity and vigilance—that differ in repeatability and have previously been associated with mating patterns and fitness in other species. Second, we test whether an individual's FID is associated with variability in the dunnocks' mating system (i.e. monogamous pairs vs. polygamous groups). Finally, we determine whether FID and provisioning of males and females associate with their reproductive success. We found no statistical support for assortative mating in FID between males and females. Interestingly, in polygamous groups, co‐breeding males differed in their FIDs with dominant alpha males having significantly shorter FIDs compared with subordinate beta‐males. Moreover, there was evidence for assortative mating in provisioning for alpha males and females in polygamous groups. We also found that male provisioning influenced reproductive success of both sexes, whereas female provisioning rates only positively correlated with her own but not their partner(s) reproductive output. Our results suggest that personality differences may have important implications for social relationships, the emergence of different mating patterns and ultimately reproductive success within populations. Making use of the dunnock’s variable mating system, we investigate whether inter‐individual behavioural variation is associated with partner choice, social breeding system, as well as reproductive success. Our findings do not only support the idea that personality influences social relationships but also may have implications for the emergence of different mating systems.