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Boldness as a consistent personality trait in the noble crayfish, Astacus astacus

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Abstract

Consistent individual differences in behavioural responses to perceived predation risk may have extensive ecological and evolutionary implications. We studied the repeatability of boldness across time and its relation to resource holding potential in the noble crayfish, Astacus astacus L., using predator-naïve immature individuals. We followed individual’s shelter use both with and without exposure to the chemical and physical cues of predators, and with and without the presence of a conspecific. In addition, we examined if armament, i.e. relative chelae size, would be correlated with individual differences in behaviour. Individuals showed repeatable behaviours across time and context. Individuals that occupied the shelter in competitive dyadic tests also spent more time in the shelter during individual control observations, suggesting that boldness is a personality trait that does not necessarily relate positively to high resource holding potential in the noble crayfish. The relative size of chelae did not correlate with any of the measured behavioural variables. Our results suggest that boldness can be considered as individually consistent and ecologically important personality trait in the noble crayfish.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by the Academy of Finland (project #127398) and by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. We thank the staff of the Experimental Unit of the Department of Biology, University of Oulu for the maintenance of the crayfish and help in the practical execution of the experimental procedures. We thank Aki Puhka for his help in the experiments and two anonymous referees for the very valuable comments on the manuscript. We also gratefully acknowledge Nick DiRienzo for his valuable linguistic revision of the manuscript. The perch in this experiment were held in laboratory conditions with the permission ESLH-2009-06035/Ym-23 from ELLA (Finnish board for the use of animals in experiments).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Anssi Vainikka & Petri Niemelä

  2. Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20024, Turku, Finland

    Markus J. Rantala

  3. Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P. O. Box 65, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Heikki Hirvonen

  4. Department of Biology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101, Joensuu, Finland

    Raine Kortet

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  1. Anssi Vainikka
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  2. Markus J. Rantala
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Correspondence to Anssi Vainikka.

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Vainikka, A., Rantala, M.J., Niemelä, P. et al. Boldness as a consistent personality trait in the noble crayfish, Astacus astacus . acta ethol 14, 17–25 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-010-0086-1

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