Animal personality is one of the hot topics in behavioral ecology.The small mammal adaptive evolution and management group has been committed to the study of the dominant small mammal on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau for many years. By comparing the relationships between personality, sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems, the two-layer model hypothesis was verified (Qu et al., 2018), this work was reported by Science Trends.
According to the Pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis, animal personality is closely related to the life history.Previous studies have proved that the life history of pikas at different altitudes are significantly different, and whether there are also differences in personality and behavioral syndrome is still unknown. In collaboration with the University of Quebec at Montreal and University of Winnipeg of Canada, Dr. Jiapeng Qu conducted this project, tested the variations and correlations between animal activity and boldness in pika from different altitudes, verified that environmental difference is one of the main factors for the differentiation of animal personality. This work was published with the title "Among-population divergence in personality is linked to altitude in plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae)" in Frontiers in Zoology on July 13, 2019. Both researches are funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31770459), CAS "Light of West China" and Youth Innovation Promotion Association.