2026-10-13T10:42:14Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34032714 2026-09-30T14:10:40Z category_24214 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Behavioral responses to cold stress vary during poleward range expansion of <i>Nerita yoldii</i> Junchi Ma (25144279) linxuan Ma (23837874) Jie Wang (25144282) Yunwei Dong (8024855) Behavioural ecology cold stress behavioral response Nerita yoldii boldness locomotor performance range expansion <p dir="ltr">Climate driven poleward range expansions expose newly established populations to unfamiliar winter thermal conditions, yet the behavioral responses that contribute to persistence at range edges remain poorly understood. Here, we examined boldness and locomotor performance under acute cold stress in the intertidal snail <i>Nerita yoldii</i>, which has recently expanded northward along the Chinese coastline into cold‐temperate regions. Using six populations spanning the historical and expanded ranges, we combined simulated winter body temperature with controlled cold‐stress experiments to quantify emergence latency as an index of boldness and movement distance as a measure of locomotor performance. Northern expanding populations experienced colder winters and more frequent extreme cold events than southern historical populations. Boldness before cold exposure did not differ significantly among populations, but changes in boldness following cold exposure were population specific: the recently established populations maintained relatively stable boldness, whereas the historical-range populations became significantly shyer. In contrast, movement distance during cooling differed among populations but was not significantly altered by repeated cold exposure. Exploratory population-level analyses showed that changes in boldness were positively associated with mean simulated body temperature, whereas associations with extreme winter temperature and estimated population age were positive but not statistically significant. These findings show that behavioral responses to cold stress vary across the expanding range of <i>N. yoldii</i> and may reflect differences in thermal and colonization histories. Such population-specific behavioral variation may influence persistence after colonization and should be considered when predicting range-edge responses to ongoing climate change. </p> 2026-09-30T14:10:40Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.34032714.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Behavioral_responses_to_cold_stress_vary_during_poleward_range_expansion_of_i_Nerita_yoldii_i_/34032714 CC BY 4.0