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Climate change has led animal species to shift their ranges to greater elevations, latitudes, and depths, tracking their preferred abiotic niche. However, there is extensive variation in these shifts, and some species have not shifted their ranges at all. Some of this variation arises because species’ distributions not only align with the abiotic environment but are also shaped by biotic factors and movement. Through facilitating rapid adaptive responses to climate-mediated changes to abiotic, biotic, and movement factors, behavioral plasticity allows populations to survive environmental change by persisting in place, while also enabling successful establishment in novel habitats when shifting in space. 

How animals behave in novel situations may significantly affect multiple aspects of their biology, including how they respond to environmental change. Two aspects of behaviour that are often used to assess interactions with new environments are exploration and boldness. Within species, variation in these responses to novelty is thought to reflect differences in individual behavioural phenotypes (e.g. behavioural syndromes). Between species, these responses may be influenced by the degree of ecological specialization, with members of more specialized taxa typically expected to display a reduced tendency to interact with novel habitats. To test the prediction that more ecologically specialized species are more neophobic, we used open-field assays to compare exploratory behaviour and boldness among free-living members of two partially sympatric species of chipmunks from the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, U.S.A.: the lodgepole chipmunk, Tamias speciosus, a habitat generalist, and the alpine chipmunk, Tamias alpinus, a habitat specialist. Our analyses indicate that while behavioural measures of boldness did not differ between these species, individual T. speciosus were on average more exploratory than individual T. alpinus. Although the number of individuals tested per species was limited, these findings have important implications for understanding reported interspecific differences in elevational range shifts in response to changing environmental conditions in the Sierra Nevada. More generally, our analyses underscore the potential importance of behavioural responses to novelty in shaping species level patterns of response to environmental change.