Repeatable and heritable behavioural variation in a wild cooperative breeder

Edwards, Hannah A.; Burke, Terry; Dugdale, Hannah L.

doi:10.1093/beheco/arx013

Cited by 29 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(123 reference statements)

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“…; Edwards et al. ), although this could be calculated whenever estimates of V A and V PE are available. One of the reasons why the distinction between the heritability of personality and heritability of behavior in general should be made is that it allows us to assess how additive genetic and non‐genetic factors might influence the evolution of personality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, we are able to investigate whether personality (Dingemanse et al 2010;Nakagawa and Schielzeth 2010;Dochtermann et al 2014) per se, and not just the behavior, is heritable. Very few studies have reported the repeatability of personality traits (e.g., Petelle et al 2015;Edwards et al 2017), although this could be calculated whenever estimates of V A and V PE are available. One of the reasons why the distinction between the heritability of personality and heritability of behavior in general should be made is that it allows us to assess how additive genetic and non-genetic factors might influence the evolution of personality.…”

Section: The Heritability Of Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, we ask whether a social cue can affect the evolvability and heritability of behavior, and so influence evolutionary trajectories. Besides some theoretical studies (Dochtermann et al 2014), few empirical studies have reported quantitative genetic variation in personality traits (Petelle et al 2015;Edwards et al 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Social cues affect quantitative genetic variation and covariation in animal personality traits

2019

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The social environment is expected to have substantial effects on behavior, and as a consequence, its heritability and evolvability. We investigated these effects by exposing Australian field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) to either silence or recordings of male acoustic sexual signals. We used a combined pedigree and full‐sib/half‐sib breeding design to estimate the repeatability, heritability, and evolvability of behaviors related to boldness, exploration, and activity. All behaviors measured were significantly repeatable in both social environments. Additionally, most behaviors showed significant heritabilities in the two environments. We found no difference in repeatabilities between the silent and the acoustic environment but did find significant differences in the heritabilities and evolvabilities between these environments. There was a high degree of similarity between the phenotypic covariance matrices across the two environments, while the genotypic covariance matrices were highly dissimilar. Reflecting this, we found significant genotype‐by‐environment interactions for most of the behaviors. Lastly, we found that the repeatable aspect of behavior (“personality”) was significantly heritable for most behaviors, but that these heritabilities were higher in the acoustic than in the silent environment. We conclude that the social environment can have a significant impact on the heritability and evolvability of behavior, and argue that evolutionary inferences from phenotypic studies should be made with caution.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Heritability Of Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social cues affect quantitative genetic variation and covariation in animal personality traits

2019

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“…Plots of both traits after repeat testing can be found in Supplementary Figure S1 and S2. Novel environment exploration and novel object exploration are repeatable in this study species (Edwards et al 2015; Edwards et al forthcoming). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 67%

Exploration is dependent on reproductive state, not social state, in a cooperatively breeding bird

Edwards

Dugdale

Richardson

et al. 2016

BEHECO

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Lay SummaryAn individual’s circumstances or properties—also known as state—maybe a mechanism encouraging behavioral differences among individuals. We investigated whether exploration was associated with social state or reproductive state (i.e., insect abundance at year of birth) in a wild cooperative breeder. We found fast novel object exploration was associated with young individuals born into years of high insect abundance (i.e., low future reproductive state), suggesting this behavior is reproductive state-dependent.

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“…However, most of these studies have been performed in captivity, potentially because it is difficult to phenotype and genotype a population of wild individuals repeatedly throughout their life history, especially at young ages (Oers & Sinn, ). The few existing studies across life‐history stages in wild birds show that the same behavioural measures can be positively, negatively or not correlated across contexts (Kluen & Brommer, ; Class & Brommer, ; Garamszegi et al ., ; Edwards et al ., ). Therefore, we do not know whether our measures of behavioural syndromes in captivity and within a life‐history stage reflect what happens in the wild and across life‐history stages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Heritability and social brood effects on personality in juvenile and adult life‐history stages in a wild passerine

Winney

Schroeder

Nakagawa

et al. 2017

J of Evolutionary Biology

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How has evolution led to the variation in behavioural phenotypes (personalities) in a population? Knowledge of whether personality is heritable, and to what degree it is influenced by the social environment, is crucial to understanding its evolutionary significance, yet few estimates are available from natural populations. We tracked three behavioural traits during different life-history stages in a pedigreed population of wild house sparrows. Using a quantitative genetic approach, we demonstrated heritability in adult exploration, and in nestling activity after accounting for fixed effects, but not in adult boldness. We did not detect maternal effects on any traits, but we did detect a social brood effect on nestling activity. Boldness, exploration and nestling activity in this population did not form a behavioural syndrome, suggesting that selection could act independently on these behavioural traits in this species, although we found no consistent support for phenotypic selection on these traits. Our work shows that repeatable behaviours can vary in their heritability and that social context influences personality traits. Future efforts could separate whether personality traits differ in heritability because they have served specific functional roles in the evolution of the phenotype or because our concept of personality and the stability of behaviour needs to be revised.

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Repeatable and heritable behavioural variation in a wild cooperative breeder

Cited by 29 publications

References 80 publications

Social cues affect quantitative genetic variation and covariation in animal personality traits

Social cues affect quantitative genetic variation and covariation in animal personality traits

Exploration is dependent on reproductive state, not social state, in a cooperatively breeding bird

Heritability and social brood effects on personality in juvenile and adult life‐history stages in a wild passerine

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