This review examines the contribution of research on fishes to the growing field of behavioural syndromes. Current knowledge of behavioural syndromes in fishes is reviewed with respect to five main axes of animal personality: (1) shyness-boldness, (2) exploration-avoidance, (3) activity, (4) aggressiveness and (5) sociability. Compared with other taxa, research on fishes has played a leading role in describing the shy-bold personality axis and has made innovative contributions to the study of the sociability dimension by incorporating social network theory. Fishes are virtually the only major taxon in which behavioural correlations have been compared between populations. This research has guided the field in examining how variation in selection regime may shape personality. Recent research on fishes has also made important strides in understanding genetic and neuroendocrine bases for behavioural syndromes using approaches involving artificial selection, genetic mapping, candidate gene and functional genomics. This work has illustrated consistent individual variation in highly complex neuroendocrine and gene expression pathways. In contrast, relatively little work on fishes has examined the ontogenetic stability of behavioural syndromes or their fitness consequences. Finally, adopting a behavioural syndrome framework in fisheries management issues including artificial propagation, habitat restoration and invasive species, may promote restoration success. Few studies, however, have examined the ecological relevance of behavioural syndromes in the field. Knowledge of how behavioural syndromes play out in the wild will be crucial to incorporating such a framework into management practices.
Thinking about the evolutionary causes and consequences of trait correlations has been dominated by quantitative genetics theory that is focused on hypothetical loci. Since this theory was initially developed, technology has enabled the identification of specific genetic variants that contribute to trait correlations. Here, we review studies of the genetic basis of trait correlations to ask: What has this new information taught us? We find that causal variants can be pleiotropic and/or linked in different ways, indicating that pleiotropy and linkage are not alternative genetic mechanisms. Further, many trait correlations have a polygenic basis, suggesting that both pleiotropy and linkage likely contribute. We discuss implications of these findings for the evolutionary causes and consequences of trait correlations.
Social niche construction (SNC) occurs when animals actively shape their social environments. Currently the fitness consequences of SNC are poorly understood, and no study has examined whether variation in SNC has a genetic basis. Here we report the first instance of genetic variation in SNC by showing that Drosophila male aggression shapes the social environment. We allowed flies of different genotypes to interact in complex arenas; we measured the number and sex of individuals in the groups that formed and counted instances of mating. Arenas containing more aggressive male genotypes formed groups with fewer males, demonstrating that aggressive male genotypes experienced different social environments than nonaggressive genotypes. Further, genotypes with highest mating success were those whose SNC behavior generated the social environment in which they were most adept at mating: genotypes who mate most often after winning aggressive encounters benefit from aggressive SNC, while genotypes who mate most often after losing achieve high mating rates by forgoing aggression. The presence of these alternative strategies-which were robust across eight population densities-revealed that selection on aggression and context-dependent mating was disruptive, consistent with the hypothesis that SNC can maintain genetic variation in multiple behaviors.
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