Abstract

Personality differences are an important part of animal behavior research and a potential factor affecting the physiochemical response of animals to stimuli. Therefore, accurate classification of personality has an impact on animal experiment research that cannot be ignored. However no completely objective methods have been noticed hitherto to be employed in aquatic animal personality studies. To address this issue, we established a personality analysis method based on machine learning (PAML) to avoid the influence of subjective factors. Then we analyzed the personality changes of swimming crab Portunus trituberculatus exposed to external stimuli i.e. food deprivation. Results showed that the high-accuracy PAML method could provide a comprehensive understanding of crab personality classification. Based on PAML, the personality of P. trituberculatus was detected to change dynamically under stress. After analyzing three typical personality characteristics: boldness, activity and hesitancy, we found that the stability of boldness was the strongest, which is the best single candidate for personality evaluation, while the activity changed greatly under stress. This study confirms that animal personality changes dynamically with external factors. Based on PAML, we can not only avoid subjective factors and improve classification accuracy, but also quantitatively trace the dynamic influence of external factors on aquatic animal personality.

Highlights

  • The ubiquitous personality differences among conspecific individuals can affect their behaviors such as struggles (Rudin and Briffa, 2011) and physiological response mechanisms (Careau et al, 2008), and affect animal adaptation to the environment

  • This study aims to provide a scientific reference for improving the objectivity and accuracy of aquatic animal personality recognition

  • We explored the effects of machine learningassisted animal behavior studies in the P. trituberculatus, representative of aquatic animals

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Summary

Introduction

The ubiquitous personality differences among conspecific individuals can affect their behaviors such as struggles (Rudin and Briffa, 2011) and physiological response mechanisms (Careau et al, 2008), and affect animal adaptation to the environment. In previous studies, the influence of personality differences on animals in nature or in the laboratory was not paid enough attention to. In this respect, scarce works are only noticed in pure animal behavior studies. Scarce works are only noticed in pure animal behavior studies This is speculated to be mainly related to the lack of personality classification criteria. The result of personality classification is highly depends on the subjective perspective of the researcher. Eliminating the influence of subjective factors and establishing the classification criteria have become the key to studies on animal personality and environmental adaptation mechanism

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