关键词: 贮食行为, 探索行为, 勇敢行为, 静止代谢率, 平均每日代谢率, 长爪沙鼠

Abstract: Food hoarding is an adaptive strategy in animals to cope with the seasonal and unpredictable changes of food resources. In group-living animals, the siblings usually show different food hoarding behaviors, but the relationship between food hoarding behavior and personality and metabolism has not yet been studied. In this study, we selected Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) with high and low food hoarding behavior, and compared the personality (boldness and exploration), resting metabolic rate, serum thyroid hormones, locomotion distance during food hoarding and average daily metabolic rate after food hoarding of these two groups. Our results showed that the amount of gerbils with high and low food hoarding behavior accounted for 49% (22/45) and 47% (21/45), respectively. Results of this study did not show significant differences in personality, resting metabolic rate and serum thyroid hormones between these two groups. Moreover the movement distance of the high food-hoarders was significantly longer than that of the low food-hoarders during the hoarding period, and the average daily metabolic rate after hoarding in the high food-hoarding group was significantly lower than that in the low food-hoarding group. These findings indicate that the food-hoarding behavior of gerbils in the laboratory condition did not related to the personality and resting metabolic rate, and the high food hoarders would reduce the total energy consumption after food hoarding to compensate the high energy cost during the food hoarding period.

Key words: Food hoarding, Exploration, Boldness, Resting metabolic rate, Average daily metabolic rate, Mongolia gerbils（Meriones unguiculatus）