Effects of acclimatisation on behavioural repeatability in two behaviour assays of the guppy Poecilia reticulata

Establishing behavioural repeatability is important in animal personality research; however, a range of factors can influence repeatability. Experimental design, particularly acclimation time, is important in managing a subject's stress prior to the onset of behavioural observations. Acclimatis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral ecology and sociobiology 2018-10, Vol.72 (10), p.1-11, Article 166
Main Authors: O'Neill, Samuel J., Williamson, Jane E., Tosetto, Louise, Brown, Culum
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acclimation
Acclimatization
Animal behavior
Animal Ecology
Assaying
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Design of experiments
Emergence
Experimental design
Feral populations
Fish
Life Sciences
Original Article
Personality
Poecilia reticulata
Populations
Reproducibility
Zoology
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Summary:Establishing behavioural repeatability is important in animal personality research; however, a range of factors can influence repeatability. Experimental design, particularly acclimation time, is important in managing a subject's stress prior to the onset of behavioural observations. Acclimatisation also ensures we capture "normal" behaviour and promotes consistency in the subject's responses between observations. The importance of acclimatisation prior to an assay is widely recognised by animal researchers; however, acclimation time varies dramatically across personality studies. Here, we investigated the effects of acclimatisation time on the repeatability of activity and emergence behaviour in feral and domestic populations of lab-reared guppy, Poecilia reticulata. Contrary with expectations and previous findings, we found highest repeatability in guppy activity levels after 2 h of acclimation to the test arena. In the emergence assay, fish exposed to 10 min of acclimatisation showed highest repeatability; however, all acclimation periods produced high repeatability, suggesting that the emergence assay generates robust behavioural responses irrespective of acclimation time. The outcomes were broadly consistent across both populations. These results show that methodology can impact the findings of animal personality research and needs to be considered carefully for each assay. We recommend that researchers investigate appropriate acclimatisation times for their study species prior to commencing research.
ISSN:0340-5443
1432-0762
DOI:10.1007/s00265-018-2582-7