Pace of life and behaviour: rapid development is linked with increased activity and voracity in the wolf spider Pardosa agrestis

Modern life history theory hypothesizes that pace of life is a strong predictor of life history traits. Recently, the notion that life history studies should integrate animal behaviour has emerged, because between-individual differences in behaviour are often coupled with fitness differences. So far, studies have mainly focused on interspecies or interpopulation perspectives, and research on the effects of life history differences on individual behaviour remain scarce. In the present study we aimed to contribute to the understanding of how pace of life is related to consistent individual behaviour. We investigated the relationship between developmental speed and consistent behaviour of the field wolf spider, Pardosa agrestis. In this species, individuals originating from the same clutch can typically follow either a slow or a rapid developmental pathway, characterized by a developmental time of about 10 or 3 months, respectively. We found that spiders, regardless of their developmental speed, behaved consistently in most of the tests. Our results also show that individuals developing rapidly were significantly more active during exploration and more successful in prey-catching tests than slowly developing spiders. Although rapidly developing spiders were bolder in one of the tests, this difference did not persist over the repeated measurements. Our work seems to support the notion that pace of life and animal personality are correlated, and pace of life might predict the behavioural types of individuals.