Abstract
Behavioral flexibility is a type of phenotypic plasticity that can influence how animals cope with environmental change and is often measured with a reversal learning paradigm. The goal of this study was to understand why individuals differ in behavioral flexibility, and whether individual differences in behavioral flexibility fit the predictions of coping styles theory. We tested whether individual variation in flexibility correlates with response to novelty (response to a novel object), boldness (emergence into a novel environment), and behavioral persistence (response to a barrier), and tested for trade-offs between how quickly individuals learn an initial discrimination and flexibility. We compare results when reversal learning performance is measured during an early step of reversal learning (e.g. the number of errors during the first reversal session) to when reversal learning performance is measured by time to criterion. Individuals that made fewer mistakes during an early step of reversal learning spent more time away from the novel object, were less bold, less persistent, and performed worse during initial discrimination learning. In contrast, time to criterion was not correlated with any of the behaviors measured. This result highlights the utility of dissecting the steps of reversal learning to better understand variation in behavioral flexibility. Altogether, this study suggests that individuals differ in flexibility because flexibility is a key ingredient to their overall integrated strategy for coping with environmental challenges.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the members of the Bell lab for their help throughout this project. We would also like to thank Sean Ehlman, Rebecca Halpin and the Putah Creek Reserve at the University of California Davis for help with collecting fish.
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Financial support was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program and by the University of Illinois. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IOS 1121980, by the National Institutes of Health under award number 2R01GM082937-06A1.
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MB conceived of the study, designed the study, conducted the training of the fish, carried out the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript. AB conceived of the study, designed the study, and drafted the manuscript. All authors gave final approval for publication.
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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in this study involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (IACUC protocol #15077). This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
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Bensky, M.K., Bell, A.M. Predictors of individual variation in reversal learning performance in three-spined sticklebacks. Anim Cogn 23, 925–938 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01399-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01399-8