Individual boldness is linked to protective shell shape in aquatic snails.

ABSTRACT: The existence of consistent individual differences in behaviour ('animal personality') has been well documented in recent years. However, how such individual variation in behaviour is maintained over evolutionary time is an ongoing conundrum. A well-studied axis of animal personality is individual variation along a bold-shy continuum, where individuals differ consistently in their propensity to take risks. A predation-risk cost to boldness is often assumed, but also that the reproductive benefits associated with boldness lead to equivalent fitness outcomes between bold and shy individuals over a lifetime. However, an alternative or complementary explanation may be that bold individuals phenotypically compensate for their risky lifestyle to reduce predation costs, for instance by investing

SUBMITTER: Ahlgren J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4424617 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature