Regulation between personality traits: individual social tendencies modulate whether boldness and leadership are correlated

Peggy A Bevan,Isabella Gosetto,Christos C Ioannou,Isobel Barnes,Eliza R Jenkins

doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.0829

Peggy A Bevan, Isabella Gosetto + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0829

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Abstract

Although consistent behavioural differences between individuals (i.e. personality variation) are now well established in animals, these differences are not always expressed when individuals interact in social groups. This can be key in important social dynamics such as leadership, which is often positively related to personality traits such as boldness. Individuals consistently differ in how social they are (their sociability), so if other axes of personality variation, such as boldness, can be suppressed during social interactions, this suppression should be stronger in more sociable individuals. We measured boldness (latency to leave a refuge when alone) and sociability (time spent with a conspecific) in three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and tested the boldness–leadership association in pairs of these fish. Both boldness and sociability were repeatable, but were not correlated. When splitting the data between the 50% most sociable and 50% less sociable fish, boldness was more strongly associated with leadership in less rather than more sociable individuals. This is consistent with more sociable fish conforming to their partner's behaviour due to their greater social tendency. One axis of personality variation (sociability) can thus modulate the relationship between others (boldness and leadership), with potential implications for selection on personality variation in social animals.

Highlights

Consistent inter-individual differences in behaviour within populations, referred to as personality variation, are known to be a widespread phenomenon across animal taxa [1,2]
The initial analyses focused on the single-fish trials and tested for repeatability within, and correlation between, boldness and sociability to establish these as personality traits and to test whether they were independent variables
We quantified social tendency and risk-taking tendency in individuals and tested whether the positive relationship between boldness and leadership was affected by social tendency

Summary

Introduction

Consistent inter-individual differences in behaviour within populations, referred to as personality variation, are known to be a widespread phenomenon across animal taxa [1,2]. Individual fish were moved from their holding tank and placed in the darkened (with 5 mm black plastic mesh overhead) refuge at the start of the maze and given 120 s to habituate before recording began and the door was slowly raised, giving the fish access to the main arena (figure 1). The initial analyses focused on the single-fish trials and tested for repeatability within, and correlation between, boldness (latency to first leave the refuge in the Y maze when tested alone) and sociability (the time spent with a conspecific) to establish these as personality traits and to test whether they were independent variables.

Results

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Discussion