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Habitat quality mediates personality through differences in social context

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Abstract

Assessing the stability of animal personalities has become a major goal of behavioral ecologists. Most personality studies have utilized solitary individuals, but little is known on the extent that individuals retain their personality across ecologically relevant group settings. We conducted a field survey which determined that mud crabs, Panopeus herbstii, remain scattered as isolated individuals on degraded oyster reefs while high quality reefs can sustain high crab densities (>10 m−2). We examined the impact of these differences in social context on personality by quantifying the boldness of the same individual crabs when in isolation and in natural cohorts. Crabs were also exposed to either a treatment of predator cues or a control of no cue throughout the experiment to assess the strength of this behavioral reaction norm. Crabs were significantly bolder when in groups than as solitary individuals with predator cue treatments exhibiting severally reduced crab activity levels in comparison to corresponding treatments with no predator cues. Behavioral plasticity depended on the individual and was strongest in the presence of predator cues. While bold crabs largely maintained their personality in isolation and group settings, shy crabs would become substantially bolder when among conspecifics. These results imply that the shifts in crab boldness were a response to changes in perceived predation risk, and provide a mechanism for explaining variation in behavioral plasticity. Such findings suggest that habitat degradation may produce subpopulations with different behavioral patterns because of differing social interactions between individual animals.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks go to the Baruch institute for access to their facilities and for their financial support in the form of a Vernberg Fellowship. Additional funding was providing by National Science Foundation Grant No. OCE-1129166 and the University of South Carolina Presidential Fellowship.

Author contribution statement

BAB and BDG conceived and designed the experiments. BAB performed the experiments. BAB and BDG analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Science Program, School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of South Carolina, 701 Sumter Street, EWS 617, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Benjamin A. Belgrad & Blaine D. Griffen

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Blaine D. Griffen

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  1. Benjamin A. Belgrad
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Correspondence to Benjamin A. Belgrad.

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Communicated by Jessica Sanchez.

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Belgrad, B.A., Griffen, B.D. Habitat quality mediates personality through differences in social context. Oecologia 184, 431–440 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-3886-4

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