Abstract
The developmental perspectives of animal personality enhance our understanding of how personality structure changes in relation to life stage. Clonal animals are ideal models for developmental studies because personality differences can be solely attributed to environmental factors. Here, I investigated the presence of personality within a species of clonal gecko, Lepidodactylus lugubris, at different developmental stages. For juveniles and adult geckos, I measured exploration (reaction to a novel situation) and boldness (risk-prone tendency) and evaluated repeatability and correlation of these behavioural traits. Each gecko exhibited different exploration and boldness with significant repeatability through time but no correlation between these behavioural traits. Small juveniles were composed of only bold and low explorative individuals but large juveniles and adults were composed of various personality type individuals. These results demonstrate that subject geckos have a similar personality structure across life stages and that exploration and boldness are independent personality without forming behavioural syndrome structure. Biased composition of personality type between life stages suggests that appearance of different personality type individuals during an early ontogenetic stage generates personality variation within the clonal population. This study provides developmental insight about personality structure and its composition in clonal animals living in the wild.
Highlights
Consistent behavioural differences between individuals are described as animal personality, and this topic is a burgeoning field of study in behavioural ecology and ethology (Gosling 2001; Réale et al 2007; Carere and Maestripieri 2013)
Researchers have demonstrated that several animal species have personality structure that may change across life stages (Petelle et al 2013; Guenther et al 2014; Class and Brommer 2015; Wuerz and Krüger 2015) and that personality type is not always stable throughout an individual’s life span (Müller and Müller 2015; Favati et al 2016; Wexler et al 2016)
These findings suggest that animal personality changes across life stages that are associated with lifehistory dependent behavioural strategies
Summary
Consistent behavioural differences between individuals are described as animal personality, and this topic is a burgeoning field of study in behavioural ecology and ethology (Gosling 2001; Réale et al 2007; Carere and Maestripieri 2013). Researchers have demonstrated that several animal species have personality structure that may change across life stages (Petelle et al 2013; Guenther et al 2014; Class and Brommer 2015; Wuerz and Krüger 2015) and that personality type is not always stable throughout an individual’s life span (Müller and Müller 2015; Favati et al 2016; Wexler et al 2016). These findings suggest that animal personality changes across life stages that are associated with lifehistory dependent behavioural strategies
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