A Strong Genetic Correlation Underlying a Behavioural Syndrome Disappears During Development Because of Genotype-age Interactions

Overview

Journal Proc Biol Sci

Specialty Biology

Date 2015 Jun 5

PMID 26041348

Citations 10

Authors

Barbara Class

Jon E Brommer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In animal populations, as in humans, behavioural differences between individuals that are consistent over time and across contexts are considered to reflect personality, and suites of correlated behaviours expressed by individuals are known as behavioural syndromes. Lifelong stability of behavioural syndromes is often assumed, either implicitly or explicitly. Here, we use a quantitative genetic approach to study the developmental stability of a behavioural syndrome in a wild population of blue tits. We find that a behavioural syndrome formed by a strong genetic correlation of two personality traits in nestlings disappears in adults, and we demonstrate that genotype-age interaction is the likely mechanism underlying this change during development. A behavioural syndrome may hence change during organismal development, even when personality traits seem to be strongly physiologically or functionally linked in one age group. We outline how such developmental plasticity has important ramifications for understanding the mechanistic basis as well as the evolutionary consequences of behavioural syndromes.

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