Interacting with the enemy: indirect effects of personality on conspecific aggression in crickets
Santostefano, F; Wilson, A; Araya-Ajoy, YG; et al.Dingemanse, NJ
Date: 28 March 2016
Article
Journal
Behavioral Ecology
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Publisher DOI
Abstract
In animal contests, individuals respond plastically to the phenotypes of the opponents that they confront. These ‘opponent’ – or ‘indirect’ – effects are often repeatable, e.g., certain opponents consistently elicit more or less aggressiveness in others. ‘Personality’ (repeatable among-individual variance in behavior) has been proposed ...
In animal contests, individuals respond plastically to the phenotypes of the opponents that they confront. These ‘opponent’ – or ‘indirect’ – effects are often repeatable, e.g., certain opponents consistently elicit more or less aggressiveness in others. ‘Personality’ (repeatable among-individual variance in behavior) has been proposed as an important source of indirect effects. Here, we repeatedly assayed aggressiveness of wild-caught adult male field crickets Gryllus campestris in staged dyadic fights, measuring aggressiveness of both contestants. Measurements of their personality in non-social contexts (activity and exploration behavior) enabled us to ask whether personality caused indirect effects on aggressiveness. Activity, exploration, and aggressiveness were positively associated into a behavioral syndrome eliciting aggressiveness in conspecifics, providing direct evidence for the role of personality in causing indirect effects. Our findings imply that a multivariate view of phenotypes that includes indirect effects greatly improves our ability to understand the ecology and evolution of behavior.
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