Recently, there has been increasing interest in behavioral syndrome research across a range of taxa. Behavioral syndromes are suites of correlated behaviors that are expressed either within a given behavioral context (e.g., mating) or between different contexts (e.g., foraging and mating). Syndrome research holds profound implications for animal behavior as it promotes a holistic view in which seemingly autonomous behaviors may not evolve independently, but as a "suite" or "package." We tested whether laboratory-reared male and female European house crickets, Acheta domesticus, exhibited behavioral syndromes by quantifying individual differences in activity, exploration, mate attraction, aggressiveness, and antipredator behavior. To our knowledge, our study is the first to consider such a breadth of behavioral traits in one organism using the syndrome framework. We found positive correlations across mating, exploratory, and antipredatory contexts, but not aggression and general activity. These behavioral differences were not correlated with body size or condition, although age explained some of the variation in motivation to mate. We suggest that these across-context correlations represent a boldness syndrome as individual risk-taking and exploration was central to across-context mating and antipredation correlations in both sexes. Keywords Personality. Boldness. Temperament. Behavioral syndromes. Risk-taking Over the past 5 years, behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists have witnessed a dramatic upsurge in behavioral syndrome research (Sih et al. 2004b; Bell 2007; Sih and Bell 2007). Succinctly defined, behavioral syndromes are suites of correlated behaviors expressed either within a given behavioral context (e.g., foraging) or between different contexts (e.g., foraging and antipredator behavior; Sih et al. 2004a, b). Behavioral syndromes hold profound implications for studies of animal behavior as they advocate a holistic view of behavior in which seemingly autonomous behaviors may not evolve independently, but as a "suite" or "package" (Price and Langen 1992; Sih et al. 2004b). As such, selection affecting one behavior in the suite may also affect how other behaviors are expressed across behavioral contexts (Sih et al. 2004b; Sih and Bell 2007). The ramification is that behaviors may not be free to evolve adaptively to independent optima across contexts due to underlying physiological, behavioral, or genetic constraints associated with the syndrome. Thus, the framework of behavioral syndromes has the potential to revolutionize the manner by which we study animal behavior, particularly if syndromes are common across taxa. The ecological and evolutionary importance of behavioral syndromes is increasingly being recognized both empirically (e.g., Bell 2005; Dingemanse et al. 2007; Wilson and McLaughlin 2007) and conceptually (Sih et al. 2004b) as noted in a recent review by Bell (2007). Personality traits (e.g., boldness, sociability, aggressiveness, activity) are difficult to study in isolation as they ...

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Phosphorus is extremely limited in the environment, often being 10–20 times lower in plants than what invertebrate herbivores require. This mismatch between resource availability and resource need can profoundly influence herbivore life history traits and fitness. This study investigated how dietary phosphorus availability influenced invertebrate growth, development time, consumption, condition, and lifespan using juvenile European house crickets, Acheta domesticus L. (Orthoptera: Gryllidae). Crickets reared on high phosphorus diets ate more food, gained more weight, were in better condition at maturity, and contained more phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon in their bodies at death than crickets reared on low phosphorus diets. There was also a trend for crickets reared on high phosphorus diets to become larger adults (interaction with weight prior to the start of the experiment). These findings can be added to the small but growing number of studies that reveal the importance of phosphorus to insect life history traits. Future research should explore the importance of dietary phosphorus availability relative to protein, lipid, and carbohydrate availability.

1. Recent ecological stoichiometric findings indicate that the relationships among key macronutrient elements [e.g. carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) of organisms and their resources] may underlie variation in life-history traits. The amount of phosphorus in an individual's body is often correlated with its rate of growth, and low-phosphorus diets are known to reduce growth in a number of insect and crustacean herbivores.2. These findings suggest that the stoichiometric imbalance between organismal biomass requirements and the relative scarcity of nutrients in nature may also underlie variation in lifetime reproductive success.3. This study investigated how dietary phosphorus availability during adulthood influenced lifetime reproductive effort, compensatory feeding, lifespan, condition, and stoichiometry of adult European House Cricket, Acheta domesticus.4. Female crickets fed high amounts of phosphorus during adulthood laid significantly more eggs compared to those fed low amounts of phosphorus. Phosphorus availability did not directly influence lifespan, condition, or body stoichiometry, and crickets did not compensate for low phosphorus diets by eating more food. 5. A stoichiometric perspective may help understand the causes of variation in invertebrate fitness.

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