Individual personality does not predict learning performance in a foraging context in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata

Kniel, Nina; Guenther, Anja; Godin, Jean‐Guy J.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.07.007

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Females are again faster to eat than males, and both sexes improve average performance over successive trials, suggesting that training of the colour signalfood reward association was successful. While not a specific objective of our study, this result contributes to the growing literature on associative learning in guppies (Kniel et al, 2020;Lucon-Xiccato & Bisazza, 2017b;Trompf & Brown, 2014). Individual fish also vary, both in training trial performance overall (averaged across trials) and in the rate of improvement, and in learning [following e.g., (Langley et al, 2020)] across trials.…”

Section: Variation In Training Performancementioning

confidence: 63%

Genetic and context-specific effects on individual inhibitory control performance in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Prentice,

Thornton,

Kolm

et al. 2023

Journal of Evolutionary Biology

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Among‐individual variation in cognitive traits, widely assumed to have evolved under adaptive processes, is increasingly being demonstrated across animal taxa. As variation among individuals is required for natural selection, characterizing individual differences and their heritability is important to understand how cognitive traits evolve. Here, we use a quantitative genetic study of wild‐type guppies repeatedly exposed to a ‘detour task’ to test for genetic variance in the cognitive trait of inhibitory control. We also test for genotype‐by‐environment interactions (GxE) by testing related fish under alternative experimental treatments (transparent vs. semi‐transparent barrier in the detour‐task). We find among‐individual variation in detour task performance, consistent with differences in inhibitory control. However, analysis of GxE reveals that heritable factors only contribute to performance variation in one treatment. This suggests that the adaptive evolutionary potential of inhibitory control (and/or other latent variables contributing to task performance) may be highly sensitive to environmental conditions. The presence of GxE also implies that the plastic response of detour task performance to treatment environment is genetically variable. Our results are consistent with a scenario where variation in individual inhibitory control stems from complex interactions between heritable and plastic components.

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Section: Variation In Training Performancementioning

confidence: 63%

Genetic and context-specific effects on individual inhibitory control performance in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Prentice,

Thornton,

Kolm

et al. 2023

Journal of Evolutionary Biology

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“…Similarly, in guppies, more sociable individuals performed poorly in a shoal size discrimination task (Lucon-Xiccato and Dadda, 2017). However, other studies have indicated that there is no effect of personality on cognitive performance in female guppies tested in a foraging learning task (Kniel et al, 2020). Even if there is no direct effect of personality on cognitive ability, similar factors (such as size and sex) influence both kinds of behavior, which might result in correlated patterns (Barber et al, 2017;Jacquin et al, 2020), indicating that even if personality does not affect cognitive performance, the two behaviors are likely to covary.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex and Population Drive Interindividual Variations in a Cognitive Task Across Three Populations of Wild Zebrafish

Daniel

Bhat

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Animal personality refers to the consistency of variation in behavior among individuals which may be the driving force behind variations in complex behaviors as well. Individual personality could predict how well an organism would perform in behavior and cognition related tasks, as well as survive and thrive in its environment. Therefore, we would expect inter-individual variations in many behaviors, which would persist even if habituation to the experimental setup occurs, which generally results in convergence of behavior (i.e., the difference between individuals becomes less pronounced). Our study used wild-caught zebrafish (Danio rerio) from three natural habitats with differing ecological regimes, to understand how consistency and repeatability in specific traits such as boldness, exploration, and spatial ability varies across and within populations even when habituation causes change in behavior. We found that the extent of individual variation differs between populations, with dynamic habitats showing similar repeatability. This indicates that habitat conditions are important drivers of individual variation in addition to other factors, such as sex or size of individuals within populations. Although we found that sex and size played an important role within some populations for some behaviors, in others, the variation was likely caused by other factors (for example, ecological factors such as vegetation and/or resource availability), for which we have not accounted. This study underlines the importance of studying inter-individual differences as the phenomenon that underpins multiple behavioral traits and explains the possible role of environmental and inherent factors that drive these differences.

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“…Among-individual variation is also found across different cognitive domains (e.g. spatial memory (Sonnenberg et al, 2019); association learning (Kniel et al, 2020), problem solving (van Horik et al, 2019)), though relatively few studies have characterised the among-individual covariance (or correlation) structure between these. This is important to do because trade-offs between domains have been hypothesised to maintain cognitive variation (Del Giudice et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among-individual variation is also found across different aspect of cognition (e.g. spatial memory (Sonnenberg et al, 2019); association learning (Kniel et al, 2020), inhibitory control (Brandão et al, 2019)). Although numerous studies have explored relationships between cognitive performance in different cognitive tasks (for a review see Burkart et al, 2017; Boogert et al, 2018), relatively few studies have characterised the among-individual covariance (or correlation) structure between these.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Guppies have been widely used as a model in behavioural and evolutionary ecology, and methods for assaying among-individual variation in cognitive performance are well established (Laland & Reader, 1999; Miletto Petrazzini & Agrillo, 2016). This species is known to perform well (on average) in tests of associative learning (Lucon-Xiccato & Bisazza, 2016; Kniel et al, 2020), motor learning (Lucon-Xiccato & Bisazza, 2016; Lucon-Xiccato et al, 2017), and cognitive flexibility (Cauchoix et al, 2018; Fong et al, 2019). However, we know little about if and how cognitive performance measures within these distinct tasks covary among individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A multivariate view of cognitive performance reveals positive correlation in the Trinidadian Guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Prentice

Thorton

Wilson

2021

Preprint

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Cognitive variation is common among-individuals within populations, and this variation can be consistent across time and context. From an evolutionary perspective, among-individual variation is important and required for natural selection. Selection has been hypothesised to favour high cognitive performance, however directional selection would be expected to erode variation over time. Additionally, while variation is a prerequisite for natural selection, it is also true that selection does not act on traits in isolation. Thus, the extent to which performance covaries among specific cognitive domains, and other aspects of phenotype (e.g. personality traits) is expected to be an important factor in shaping evolutionary dynamics. Fitness trade-offs could shape patterns of variation in performance across different cognitive domains, however positive correlations between cognitive domains and personality traits are also known to occur. Here we aimed to test this idea using a multivariate approach to characterise and test hypothesised relationships of cognitive performance across multiple domains and personality, in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata). We estimate the among-individual correlation matrix (ID) in performance across three cognitive domains; association learning in a colour discrimination task; motor cognition in a novel motor task and cognitive flexibility in a reversal learning task, and the personality trait ‘boldness’ measured as time to emerge. We found no support for trade-offs occurring, but the presence of strong positive domain-general correlations in ID, where 57% of the variation is explained by the leading eigen vector. While highlighting caveats of how non-cognitive factors and assay composition may affect the structure of the ID-matrix, we suggest that our findings are consistent with a domain-general axis of cognitive variation in this population, adding to the growing body of support for domain-general variation among-individuals in animal cognitive ability.

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Individual personality does not predict learning performance in a foraging context in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata

Cited by 9 publications

References 62 publications

Genetic and context-specific effects on individual inhibitory control performance in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Genetic and context-specific effects on individual inhibitory control performance in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Sex and Population Drive Interindividual Variations in a Cognitive Task Across Three Populations of Wild Zebrafish

A multivariate view of cognitive performance reveals positive correlation in the Trinidadian Guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

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