title: Behavioural plasticity across social contexts is regulated by the directionality of inter-individual differences.
abstract: An individual's behavioural phenotype is a combination of its unique behavioural propensities and its responsiveness to environmental variation, also known as behavioural plasticity. In social species, we must not only explore how individuals respond to variations in the physical environment but also how they react to changes in their social environment. A growing body of work has demonstrated that the behavioural heterogeneity of a group can alter its responsiveness, decision making, and fitness. Whether an individual is more or less extreme than a partner - what we term its 'relative personality' - may also alter individual behavioural responses. We determined exploratory tendencies of individual zebrafish (Danio rerio) and then constructed pairs with varying differences in 'relative personality' to determine the effect of differences between partners on behavioural plasticity. We find that relative personality, but not the magnitude of the difference between partners, is the most important determinant of behavioural plasticity across social treatments. Despite this overall effect, pairs of fish exhibited no predictable leader-follower interactions, suggesting that details of the experimental paradigm may be important in shaping social dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 106A Guyot Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Olivia L
authors.initials: OL
authors.lastname: Guayasamin
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 106A Guyot Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; Department of Collective Behaviour, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Konstanz, Germany; Chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
authors.forename: Iain D
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Couzin
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 106A Guyot Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada. Electronic address: nmiller@wlu.ca.
authors.forename: Noam Y
authors.initials: NY
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D012931:Social Environment; D015027:Zebrafish
keywords: Collective behaviour; Individual differences; Plasticity; Zebrafish