Group personality during collective decision-making: a multi-level approach

Planas‐Sitjà, Isaac; Deneubourg, Jean‐Louis; Gibon, Céline; Sempo, Grégory

doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.2515

Cited by 69 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Influences of social isolation [37] and developmental environment [38] upon personality, characterisation of behavioural syndromes [39, 40] and collective personality at the group level [41] have also been explored. However, no studies have so far investigated changes in personality traits across life stages in cockroaches and all have so far focused upon males.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality in the cockroach Diploptera punctata: Evidence for stability across developmental stages despite age effects on boldness

2017

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Despite a recent surge in the popularity of animal personality studies and their wide-ranging associations with various aspects of behavioural ecology, our understanding of the development of personality over ontogeny remains poorly understood. Stability over time is a central tenet of personality; ecological pressures experienced by an individual at different life stages may, however, vary considerably, which may have a significant effect on behavioural traits. Invertebrates often go through numerous discrete developmental stages and therefore provide a useful model for such research. Here we test for both differential consistency and age effects upon behavioural traits in the gregarious cockroach Diploptera punctata by testing the same behavioural traits in both juveniles and adults. In our sample, we find consistency in boldness, exploration and sociality within adults whilst only boldness was consistent in juveniles. Both boldness and exploration measures, representative of risk-taking behaviour, show significant consistency across discrete juvenile and adult stages. Age effects are, however, apparent in our data; juveniles are significantly bolder than adults, most likely due to differences in the ecological requirements of these life stages. Size also affects risk-taking behaviour since smaller adults are both bolder and more highly explorative. Whilst a behavioural syndrome linking boldness and exploration is evident in nymphs, this disappears by the adult stage, where links between other behavioural traits become apparent. Our results therefore indicate that differential consistency in personality can be maintained across life stages despite age effects on its magnitude, with links between some personality traits changing over ontogeny, demonstrating plasticity in behavioural syndromes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality in the cockroach Diploptera punctata: Evidence for stability across developmental stages despite age effects on boldness

2017

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“…An alternative way to investigate social behaviour at the individual level is to see how different combinations of personality types, as tested in individuals, affect the behaviour of groups (Brown & Irving, 2014;Dyer, Croft, Morrell, & Krause, 2009;Hui & Pinter-Wollman, 2014;Planas-Sitjà, Deneubourg, Gibon, & Sempo, 2015;Pruitt & Riechert, 2010). These equal-sized groups may be formed randomly, or they may be chosen to have particular phenotypic compositions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An efficient method for sorting and quantifying individual social traits based on group‐level behaviour

et al. 2017

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In social contexts, animal behaviour is often studied in terms of group‐level characteristics. One clear example of this is the collective motion of animals in decentralized structures, such as bird flocks and fish schools. A major goal of research is to identify how group‐level behaviours are shaped by the traits of individuals within them. Few methods exist to make these connections. Individual assessment is often limited, forcing alternatives such as fitting agent‐based models to experimental data. We provide a systematic experimental method for sorting animals according to socially relevant traits, without assaying them or even tagging them individually. Instead, they are repeatedly subjected to behavioural assays in groups, between which the group memberships are rearranged, in order to test the effect of many different combinations of individuals on a group‐level property or feature. We analyse this method using a general model for the group feature, and simulate a variety of specific cases to track how individuals are sorted in each case. We find that in the case where the members of a group contribute equally to the group feature, the sorting procedure increases the between‐group behavioural variation well above what is expected for groups randomly sampled from a population. For a wide class of group feature models, the individual phenotypes are efficiently sorted across the groups and thus become available for further analysis on how individual properties affect group behaviour. We also show that the experimental data can be used to estimate the individual‐level repeatability of the underlying traits. Our method allows experimenters to find repeatable variation in social behaviours that cannot be assessed in solitary individuals. Furthermore, experiments in animal behaviour often focus on comparisons between groups randomly sampled from a population. Increasing the behavioural variation between groups increases statistical power for testing whether a group feature is related to other properties of groups or to their phenotypic composition. Sorting according to socially relevant traits is also beneficial in artificial selection experiments, and for testing correlations with other traits. Overall, the method provides a useful tool to study how individual properties influence social behaviour.

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“…For example, exploration behaviour in guppies at the group level is influenced by the personalities of a minority of key individuals with certain personality types (Brown & Irving 2014). At present, however, few studies have examined personality at the group level (Dussutour et al 2008;, and we have only recently begun to investigate how consistent variation in behaviour among individuals contributes to the coordination of collective behaviours that underlies the success of social groups Hui & Pinter-Wollman 2014;Keiser et al 2014;Modlmeier et al 2014a;Planas-Sitj a et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual and Group Personalities Characterise Consensus Decision‐Making in an Ant

Cronin

2015

Ethology

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Non-human animals can exhibit idiosyncratic behaviour across individuals in much in the same way as humans. Animals with specific personalities may have advantages in some environments, and this idiosyncrasy may thus be of considerable ecological and evolutionary importance. In group-living organisms, personality can occur at the level of the group as well as that of the individual. However, at present, we have very little understanding of the possible benefits of group-level personality, and how this is linked with individual personality. In this study, I examine the influence of individual and group personality during the process of colony migration in the Japanese ant, Myrmecina nipponica. These ants use a consensus decision process to decide among alternatives when searching for a new home. Individuals contribute to this process by scouting for new nest sites, recruiting nestmates by laying pheromone trails, and carrying brood to the new site, although whether these roles are consistent among individuals and how roles are distributed within and between colonies remain unclear. Individual contributions to the nest-site selection process were quantified over five repeated relocations in five colonies. Results demonstrate that contributions to the relocation effort were highly skewed within the colonies and that individuals were consistent in their contributions over repeated relocation events. Furthermore, the distribution of effort differed between colonies, indicating that intercolony differences in composition of behavioural types resulted in colony-level personality. While these differences did not lead to any detectable difference in relocation performance between colonies in the simple experimental arrangement used, colony personality could influence decision outcomes in more complex environments.

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Group personality during collective decision-making: a multi-level approach

Cited by 69 publications

References 66 publications

Personality in the cockroach Diploptera punctata: Evidence for stability across developmental stages despite age effects on boldness

Personality in the cockroach Diploptera punctata: Evidence for stability across developmental stages despite age effects on boldness

An efficient method for sorting and quantifying individual social traits based on group‐level behaviour

Individual and Group Personalities Characterise Consensus Decision‐Making in an Ant

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