Boldness, aggression and exploration: evidence for a behavioural syndrome in male pentamorphic livebearing fish, Poecilia parae
Journal Title: Aquaculture, Aquarium, Conservation & Legislation - International Journal of the Bioflux Society - Year 2008, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
A body of evidence is being accumulated on consistent individual differences in behaviour for several animal taxa. Individuals of these species exhibit different levels of risk during competition over limited resources, and the resultant behavioural types perform better under different social and physical environmental conditions. We used approach distance to a model of a piscivore predator the pike cichlid (Crenicichla saxatilis) to categorize male pentamorphic livebearing fish or pentas (Poecilia parae) as bold, intermediate, and shy, and then tested the hypothesis that when behaviours are correlated, individuals express different behaviour types under different contexts. Our results for the most part corroborated the six predictions generated by the aforementioned hypothesis: (1) bold pentas explored a T-maze in the shortest time, and initially approached the chamber with a living pike cichlid instead of the one with the conspecific male; (2) intermediate pentas spent more time exploring the maze and exhibited no initial interest in the predator chamber nor the conspecific one; (3) shy individuals spent the most time exploring the maze, and initially approached the predator chamber, providing only partial support for this prediction because shy males did not initially approach the conspecific chamber; (4) approach distance from the pike cichlid predator model and time to explore the maze was positively correlated; (5) bold pentas exhibit highest levels of aggression toward conspecifics; and (6) bold individuals ingested the most conspecific fry. Our results lead to the conclusion that pentas exhibited a behavioural syndrome with bold fish being more aggressive, faster explorers of novel situations, and more cannibalistic than intermediate and shy individuals of the same population. Thus, penta males fall into a behavioural syndrome formally known as the proactive-reactive axis.
Authors and Affiliations
Godfrey Bourne, Audra Sammons
Keywords
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