Sex and the syndrome: individual and population consistency in behaviour in rock pool prawn Palaemon elegans

Animal personality has been widely documented across a range of species. The concept of personality is composed of individual behavioural consistency across time and between situations, and also behavioural trait correlations known as behavioural syndromes. Whilst many studies have now investigated...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-03, Vol.8 (3), p.e59437-e59437
Main Authors: Chapman, Ben B, Hegg, Alexander, Ljungberg, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Animal behavior
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Biologi
Biological Sciences
Biology
Consistency
Correlation
Disorders
Ecology
Ekologi
Exploration
Exploratory Behavior
Female
Fish
Gender aspects
Gender differences
Habitats
Human behavior
Male
Medical research
Natural Sciences
Naturvetenskap
Palaemon elegans
Palaemonidae
Personality
Prawns
Rocks
Sex
Sex differences
Sex differences (Psychology)
Sex Factors
Sexual Behavior, Animal
Stability analysis
Time Factors
Veterinary Science
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Animal personality has been widely documented across a range of species. The concept of personality is composed of individual behavioural consistency across time and between situations, and also behavioural trait correlations known as behavioural syndromes. Whilst many studies have now investigated the stability of individual personality traits, few have analysed the stability over time of entire behavioural syndromes. Here we present data from a behavioural study of rock pool prawns. We show that prawns are temporally consistent in a range of behaviours, including activity, exploration and boldness, and also that a behavioural syndrome is evident in this population. We find correlations between many behavioural traits (activity, boldness, shoaling and exploration). In addition, behavioural syndrome structure was consistent over time. Finally, few studies have explicitly studied the role of sex differences in personality traits, behavioural consistency and syndrome structure. We report behavioural differences between male and female prawns but no differences in patterns of consistency. Our study adds to the growing literature on animal personality, and provides evidence showing that syndromes themselves can exhibit temporal consistency.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0059437