Abstract

An animal’s behavioral phenotype comprises several traits, which are hierarchically structured in functional units. This is manifested in measured behaviors often being correlated, partly reflecting the need of a coordinated functional response. Unfortunately, we still have limited understanding whether consistent differences in animal behaviors are due to underlying physiological constraints or a result of plastic adaptation to their current environment. Therefore, characterizing the spatial distribution of behaviors can provide important insights into causes and consequences of behavioral variation. In the present study, we quantified behaviors in a wild, free-ranging population of the Neotropical frog Allobates femoralis. We investigated how these behaviors were linked to the frogs’ natural and social environment and quantified the extent to which these behaviors consistently differed among individuals (i.e., animal personality). We assessed levels of aggressiveness, exploration, and boldness by measuring several underlying behaviors expressed in a set of experimental assays, and found evidence for consistent among-individual differences along these axes. Contrary to our expectation, there was no relationship between individual behaviors and their natural environment, but we found a plastic response of males to changes in female density, which might reflect how individuals cope with their socio-ecological environment.

Significance statement

How are behavioral phenotypes distributed across space? Here, we studied an entire free-ranging population of poison frogs, and investigated if the personality traits aggressiveness, exploration, and boldness are linked to the frogs’ natural or social environment. We found that behavioral traits were non-randomly distributed across the population, suggesting that the spatial arrangement of behavioral traits reflects how individuals cope with their complex natural and social environment.

中文翻译：

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探索野生毒蛙的性格特征与其社会和非社会环境之间的联系

摘要

动物的行为表型包括几个特征，这些特征在功能单元中分层结构。这体现在测量的行为通常是相关的，部分反映了协调功能反应的需要。不幸的是，我们仍然对动物行为的一致差异是由于潜在的生理限制还是塑料适应其当前环境的结果了解有限。因此，表征行为的空间分布可以为行为变异的原因和后果提供重要的见解。在本研究中，我们量化了野生、自由放养的新热带蛙Allobates femoralis种群的行为。. 我们调查了这些行为如何与青蛙的自然和社会环境相关联，并量化了这些行为在个体之间始终存在差异的程度（即动物个性）。我们通过测量一组实验分析中表达的几种潜在行为来评估侵略性、探索性和大胆程度，并发现了这些轴上个体之间一致差异的证据。与我们的预期相反，个体行为与其自然环境之间没有关系，但我们发现男性对女性密度变化的可塑性反应，这可能反映了个体如何应对其社会生态环境。

意义陈述

行为表型如何在空间中分布？在这里，我们研究了整个自由放养的毒蛙种群，并调查了攻击性、探索和大胆的性格特征是否与青蛙的自然或社会环境有关。我们发现行为特征在人群中是非随机分布的，这表明行为特征的空间排列反映了个体如何应对复杂的自然和社会环境。