Energy allocation is revealed while behavioural performance persists after fire disturbance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Metabolic physiology and animal behaviour are often considered to be linked, positively or negatively, according to either the performance or allocation models. Performance seems to predominate over allocation in natural systems, but the constraining environmental context may reveal allocation limitations to energetically expensive behaviours. Habitat disturbance, such as the large-scale fire that burnt wetlands of Biebrza National Park (NE Poland), degrades natural ecosystems. It arguably reduces food and shelter availability, modifies predator–prey interactions, and poses a direct threat for animal survival, such as that of the wetland specialist root vole Microtus oeconomus. We hypothesized that fire disturbance induces physiology–behaviour co-expression, as a consequence of changed environmental context. We repeatedly measured maintenance and exercise metabolism, and behavioural responses to the open field, in a root voles from post-fire and unburnt locations. Highly repeatable maintenance metabolism and distance moved during behavioural tests correlated positively, but relatively labile exercise metabolism did not covary with behaviour. At the same time, voles from a post-fire habitat had higher maintenance metabolism and moved shorter distances than voles from unburnt areas. We conclude there is a prevalence of the performance mechanism, but simultaneous manifestation of context-dependent allocation constraints of the physiology–behaviour covariation after disturbance. The last occurs at the within-individual level, indicating the significance of behavioural plasticity in the context of environmental disturbance.