Effects of acclimatisation on behavioural repeatability in two behaviour assays of the guppy Poecilia reticulata

O’Neill, Samuel J.; Williamson, Jane E.; Tosetto, Louise; Brown, Culum

doi:10.1007/s00265-018-2582-7

Cited by 31 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The training phase also allowed individuals with different sensitivity to risk, and/or stress to habituate to the experimental procedure and potentially reduce the confounding effect of coping styles (Zidar et al 2017). A related benefit was that estimates of repeatability can be improved with greater acclimatisation time, as shown for other species (O'Neill et al 2018).…”

Section: Phase 1: Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive styles: speed–accuracy trade-offs underlie individual differences in archerfish

et al. 2020

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Individuals exhibit consistent differences in behaviour and related cognitive performance. 'Cognitive styles'-based hypotheses suggest the trade-off between speed and accuracy is an important factor where an individual's behavioural traits and linked decision speeds may account for its cognitive performance. The expected relationship between accuracy and decision speed, however, is not always clear and some studies have suggested that faster individuals do not suffer the expected cost to accuracy. Contradictory findings may be attributed to taxa specific differences but may also be due to the difficulty in separating intra-individual from inter-individual variation or the use of insufficiently challenging tasks in tests. We trained archerfish (Toxotes chatareus) to shoot at artificial targets for food, and then conducted a visual discrimination study to test the cognitive styles hypothesis. In an attempt to reduce potential confounding effects, we used a longitudinal design, and increased the challenge of the test by using differentially rewarded targets. We also tested fish in one of two conditions where we presented either two or three targets in each test. As expected, archerfish showed repeatable differences in latency to shoot and consistently fast individuals were quicker to achieve initial learning criteria than slower individuals. Repeated tests revealed an inverse relationship between discrimination accuracy and speed, with slower individuals having greater accuracy in initial trials of every day, supporting the cognitive styles hypothesis. However, this relationship was only statistically significant in the three target condition, underscoring how task design can strongly affect the ability of researchers to detect robust individual variation in cognition. Taken together, our results support the hypothesis that speed accuracy trade-offs can underlie some observed inter-individual differences in cognition.

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Section: Phase 1: Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive styles: speed–accuracy trade-offs underlie individual differences in archerfish

et al. 2020

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“…Studies have shown that continuous exposure to stimuli over a series of consecutive days can decrease the level of behavioural reactivity due to habituation. Long acclimatisation could reduce fish activity levels ( O’Neill et al, 2018 ), decrease exploration rates and increase individual’s boldness over time ( Adriaenssens & Johnsson, 2011 ). The effects of acclimatisation have also been reported on aggressiveness; in fact, the number of aggressive interactions can decrease significantly across trials ( Roy & Bhat, 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggressiveness-related behavioural types in the pearly razorfish

Martorell-Barceló

Mulet

Sanllehi

et al. 2021

PeerJ

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Behavioural types (i.e., personalities or temperament) are defined as among individual differences in behavioural traits that are consistent over time and ecological contexts. Behavioural types are widespread in nature and play a relevant role in many ecological and evolutionary processes. In this work, we studied for the first time the consistency of individual aggressiveness in the pearly razorfish, Xyrichtys novacula, using a mirror test: a classic method to define aggressive behavioural types. The experiments were carried out in semi-natural behavioural arenas and monitored through a novel Raspberry Pi-based recording system. The experimental set up allowed us to obtain repeated measures of individual aggressivity scores during four consecutive days. The decomposition of the phenotypic variance revealed a significant repeatability score (R) of 0.57 [0.44–0.60], suggesting high predictability of individual behavioural variation and the existence of different behavioural types. Aggressive behavioural types emerged irrespective of body size, sex and the internal condition of the individual. Razorfishes are a ubiquitous group of fish species that occupy sedimentary habitats in most shallow waters of temperate and tropical seas. These species are known for forming strong social structures and playing a relevant role in ecosystem functioning. Therefore, our work provides novel insight into an individual behavioural component that may play a role in poorly known ecological and evolutionary processes occurring in this species.

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“…Archerfish, like other animals perhaps especially other wild caught animals-which may be slower or less likely to engage with novel objects than captive-bred or urban individuals (Gajdon et al 2004;Jarjour et al 2020)-can require extended periods to acclimate and train (Archard and Braithwaite 2010;Patton and Braithwaite 2015). Acclimation can play an important role in the expression of behaviours and performance in behavioural assays (O'Neill et al 2018), and sufficient acclimation may help reduce the issues inherent in measuring cognition in the laboratory (Webster and Rutz 2020). Cognition studies may be particularly susceptible to factors affecting stress and environmental conditions which can affect measures (Pritchard et al 2016), and this is especially important when exploring consistent individual variation (Strand et al 2010;Rowe and Healy 2014;Griffin et al 2015;White et al 2017;Boogert et al 2018;da Silva et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this assay, each fish was recorded for 10 min, and the proportion of time spent in the open, where the fish was more than 1 body length away from the plant shelter or corners of the tank, was recorded. We used a 24-h acclimation period prior to conducting the assay, informed by our previous work with this species in a similar setup (Jones et al 2018); while a single measurement per individual is not ideal for a labile trait (Biro and Stamps 2010), suitable acclimation periods can provide more robust estimates of individual behavioural traits (Biro 2012), as demonstrated by high estimates of repeatability in guppy activity levels following acclimation (O'Neill et al 2018). To minimize observer bias, blinded methods were used; specifically, a hypothesis naïve scorer was used to score videos of the behavioural assays.…”

Section: Behavioural Assaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

Jones

Spence-Jones

Webster

et al. 2021

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.

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Effects of acclimatisation on behavioural repeatability in two behaviour assays of the guppy Poecilia reticulata

Cited by 31 publications

References 48 publications

Cognitive styles: speed–accuracy trade-offs underlie individual differences in archerfish

Cognitive styles: speed–accuracy trade-offs underlie individual differences in archerfish

Aggressiveness-related behavioural types in the pearly razorfish

Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

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