Personality differences between sexes are present in a peaceful lizard, but not in an aggressive one: a chemical communication trial in two Liolaemus species

Abstract

Animal personality can be defined as behavioral individual consistency across contexts and time, and sociability may facilitate it. Boldness and exploration can be considered as social conflictive behaviors and in lizards, social scent can either diminish or promote social conflicts. We studied boldness and exploration in Liolaemus albiceps Lobo and Laurent, 1995 and L. coeruleus Cei and Ortiz, 1983, and tested whether L. albiceps, a fewer aggressive species, presents higher individual consistency in a socially not conflictive behavior, such as escape (boldness). We also expect L. coeruleus, a more aggressive species, to present higher individual consistency in exploration, which is socially more conflictive behavior. We exposed lizards their own, conspecifics and control scent treatments. We calculated the repeatability for boldness and exploration, analyzed their correlation, and tested for behavioral plasticity. Boldness and exploration were repeatable in L. albiceps at species level, with females showing highly repeatable boldness, and males, highly repeatable exploration. L. coeruleus evidenced no significant repeatability for either behavior. There was no correlation between these two behaviors, and both species showed plasticity. L. albiceps individuals were bolder and explored less under conspecific scents. L. coeruleus individuals explored less in presence of their own scents than novelty scents, and presented inter-individual variation in plasticity. A peaceful lifestyle may favor behavioral consistency within individuals, whereas a more aggressive lifestyle may constrain within and among individual consistency in a chemical communication context. However, individual differences in plasticity could counterbalance this constraint

Meta-analysis of Behavioural Research in Lizards Reveals that Viviparity Contributes Better to Animal Personality than Secretory Glands

“…In crickets, individuals display higher aggressiveness and repeatability in the presence of conspecifics than in solitary conditions (Jäger et al, 2019). However, aggressiveness does not always promote individual consistency; Ruiz-Monachesi et al (2023) showed that a more peaceful species, Liolaemus albiceps, exhibited behavioural consistency, whereas a more aggressive species, L. coeruleus, did not.…”