No personality without experience? A test on Rana dalmatina tadpoles

Ecology and Evolution

Tamás J. Urszán¹  László Z. Garamszegi³  Gergely Nagy¹  Attila Hettyey²  János Török¹ 

[1] Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and Ecology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary;Lendület Evolutionary Ecology Research Group, MTA ATK NÖVI, Budapest, Hungary;Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Estacion Biologica de Donana – CSIC, Seville, Spain

关键词: Animal personality;    behavioral syndrome;    environment;    evolution;    plasticity;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.1804

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

While the number of studies reporting the presence of individual behavioral consistency (animal personality, behavioral syndrome) has boomed in the recent years, there is still much controversy about the proximate and ultimate mechanisms resulting in the phenomenon. For instance, direct environmental effects during ontogeny (phenotypic plasticity) as the proximate mechanism behind the emergence of consistent individual differences in behavior are usually overlooked compared to environmental effects operating across generations (genetic adaptation). Here, we tested the effects of sociality and perceived predation risk during ontogeny on the strength of behavioral consistency in agile frog (Rana dalmatina) tadpoles in a factorial common garden experiment. Tadpoles reared alone and without predatory cues showed zero repeatability within (i.e., lack of personality) and zero correlation between (i.e., lack of syndrome) activity and risk-taking. On the other hand, cues from predators alone induced both activity and risk-taking personalities, while cues from predators and conspecifics together resulted in an activity – risk-taking behavioral syndrome. Our results show that individual experience has an unequivocal role in the emergence of behavioral consistency. In this particular case, the development of behavioral consistency was most likely the result of genotype × environment interactions, or with other words, individual variation in behavioral plasticity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.