The bold and the sperm: positive association between boldness and sperm number in the guppy

Abstract

Assessing the consequences of personality traits on reproductive success is one of the most important challenges in personality studies and critical to understand the evolutionary implications of behavioural variability among animals. Personality traits are typically associated with mating acquisition in males, and, hence, linked to variation in their reproductive success. However, in most species, sexual selection continues after mating, and sperm traits (such as sperm number and quality) become very important in determining post-mating competitive success. Here, we investigate whether variation in personality traits is associated with variation in sperm traits using the guppy ( Poecilia reticulata ), a species with high levels of sperm competition. We found a positive association between boldness and sperm number but not sperm velocity, suggesting that bolder males have increased post-copulatory success than shyer individuals. No association was found between exploration and sperm traits. Our work highlights the importance of considering post-copulatory traits when investigating fitness consequences of personality traits, especially in species with high levels of female multiple matings and hence sperm competition.

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

“…That guppies show consistent among-individual differences in 'boldness', as measured here by time to emerge into the test compartment over the first set of 9 trials (with a conditional repeatability of 43.9%) was expected given earlier studies of this population (e.g. Houslay et al, 2019) and guppies more generally (Brown et al, 2014;O'Neill et al, 2018;Gasparini et al, 2019). Indeed similar findings are common across a wide range of fish models used in behavioural studies (Boulton et al, 2018;White et al, 2020).…”

Sexual selection and personality: Individual and group‐level effects on mating behaviour in red junglefowl

“…In polyandrous species, personality may also influence postcopulatory sexual selection (Bridger et al, 2015;Gasparini et al, 2019;Herdegen-Radwan, 2019;Tuni et al, 2018). Male personality, female personality or their interaction could affect a male's paternity share by modulating the degree of female polyandry and the outcome of sperm competition, for example, by determining how long or how there was a tendency for individuals to mate disassortatively with respect to boldness.…”

Controlling invasive species with biologically-inspired robots

“…Our previous analyses have demonstrated that variation in behavioral, physiological, and life-history traits in fish is associated at the individual level-individuals that are more active grow faster and have higher metabolic rates than less active ones (Polverino et al, 2018). We have uncovered the association between individual variation in risk taking and fertility, where males that take more risks have high number of sperm over risk-averse males (Gasparini et al, 2019). We also found empirical evidence that manipulating social experience during development alters the mating acquisition of fish in adulthood and, hence, their reproductive success (Polverino et al, 2019b).…”

“…New technologies have offered invaluable tools for studying the ecology and evolution of living creatures (Aguilar et al, 2014) and addressing the seemingly intractable problem of invasive species (Kerr et al, 2017;McCann at al., 2019). In particular, robotics is emerging as a promising approach to studying animal behavior (Krause et al, 2011;Romano et al, 2018;Webb, 2000) and animal invasions (Dufour et al, 2020;Polverino et al, 2019). State-of-the-art robots can move autonomously (Butail et al, 2013;Butail et al, 2014;Gribovskiy et al, 2018;Katzschmann et al, 2018), simulate Figure 1 (A) Mosquitofish and (B) the body morphology and (C) swimming features that we measured in the native mosquitofish's primary predator (Micropterus salmoides) and that we integrated into the design of (D) the biologicallyinspired robotic predator presented in Polverino et al 2019a.…”