Syndromes or flexibility: behavior during a life history transition of a coral reef fish.

ABSTRACT: The theory of behavioral syndromes focuses on quantifying variation in behavior within and among individual organisms and attempts to account for the maintenance of differences in behavior that occur in a consistent manner among individuals. Behavioral syndromes have potentially important ecological consequences (e.g. survivorship tradeoffs) and can be shaped by population dynamics through selective mortality. Here, we search for any evidence for consistency of behavior across situations in juveniles of a common damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis (Pomacentridae) at the transition between larval habitats in the plankton and juvenile habitats on the reef. Naïve fish leaving the pelagic phase to settle on reefs were caught by light traps and their behaviors observed using similar methods acr

SUBMITTER: White JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3874005 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature