Do reproduction and parenting influence personality traits? Insights from threespine stickleback

Abstract

Although one of the hallmarks of personality traits is their consistency over time, we might expect personality traits to change during life history shifts. Becoming a parent is a major life history event, when individuals undergo dramatic behavioural and physiological changes. Here we employ a longitudinal experiment to ask whether personality changes in response to the experience of parenting in male threespine sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Life history theory predicts that males should be less risk averse after successfully parenting, and the neuroendocrinology of parenting suggests that parenting could reorganize the hormonal landscape and behaviour of fathers. We randomly assigned males to either an experimental group (reproduced and parented) or a control group (did not reproduce and parent), and repeatedly measured a personality trait (‘boldness’) and 11-ketotestosterone levels (11-kT, the major androgen in fishes) in individual males. In the control group, males became bolder over time. However, in the experimental group, boldness did not change. Furthermore, 11-kT changed dramatically in the experimental group, and changes in 11-kT in parents were associated with boldness after parenting ceased. Our study is one of the first to assess proximate and ultimate explanations for changes in personality as a function of reproduction and parenting.

Olfactory attractants and parity affect prenatal androgens and territoriality of coyote breeding pairs

“…Variances attributed to other random factors (test number and test period) were included in repeatability calculations, allowing us to determine whether consistent individual differences persisted despite confounding factors. We subsequently determined whether repeatability estimates were significant by examining whether each estimate's 95% confidence interval (CI) was pressed against zero, and if not we interpreted this as evidence of a significant repeatability estimate [49,88]. Repeatabilities for behavioral count and hormonal data were quantified using variance components extracted from GLMMs and LMMs, respectively.…”

“…Phenotypic consequences of environmental and temporal variation become considerably more far-reaching when considering breeding individuals and their overall influence on group or population dynamics. Breeding individuals undergo significant hormonal and behavioral changes in preparation for parenting [49,50] that can affect both breeders and even non-breeding individuals in socially complex groups such as cooperative breeding systems [51][52][53]. Moreover, phenotypic changes during gestation may affect developing neonates epigenetically [54,55].…”

Personality traits change after an opportunity to mate

“…Here, we examine the influence of mating for the first time on personality trait development in female sticklebacks. Sticklebacks are famous for their natural intraspecific variation in behavior [16,17], and a previous study found that the experience of reproduction and parenting influenced the development of risk taking behavior in male sticklebacks [18]. In contrast to males, female sticklebacks do not provide parental care.…”

Mating alters the link between movement activity and pattern in the red flour beetle

“…Virgin males may also alter their behaviour after mating and there is evidence for all possible changes. Mated males can be either less active and more averse to predation risk or more active and more successful than virgin males; mating can also lead to no change in male behaviour (Oberhauser, 1988;Sakaluk, 1990;Teal et al, 2000;Stein et al, 2016). For most insect species, however, the effect of a single mating should be more prominent for females than males.…”