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Corral-Lopez A, Bloch NI, van der Bijl W, Cortazar-Chinarro M, Szorkovszky A, Kotrschal A, Darolti I, Buechel SD, Romenskyy M, Kolm N, Mank JE. Functional convergence of genomic and transcriptomic architecture underlies schooling behaviour in a live-bearing fish. Nat Ecol Evol 2024; 8:98-110. [PMID: 37985898 PMCID: PMC10781616 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02249-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/11/2023] [Accepted: 10/12/2023] [Indexed: 11/22/2023]
Abstract
The organization and coordination of fish schools provide a valuable model to investigate the genetic architecture of affiliative behaviours and dissect the mechanisms underlying social behaviours and personalities. Here we used replicate guppy selection lines that vary in schooling propensity and combine quantitative genetics with genomic and transcriptomic analyses to investigate the genetic basis of sociability phenotypes. We show that consistent with findings in collective motion patterns, experimental evolution of schooling propensity increased the sociability of female, but not male, guppies when swimming with unfamiliar conspecifics. This finding highlights a relevant link between coordinated motion and sociability for species forming fission-fusion societies in which both group size and the type of social interactions are dynamic across space and time. We further show that alignment and attraction, the two major traits forming the sociability personality axis in this species, showed heritability estimates at the upper end of the range previously described for social behaviours, with important variation across sexes. The results from both Pool-seq and RNA-seq data indicated that genes involved in neuron migration and synaptic function were instrumental in the evolution of sociability, highlighting a crucial role of glutamatergic synaptic function and calcium-dependent signalling processes in the evolution of schooling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alberto Corral-Lopez
- Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
- Department of Zoology/Ethology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
- Division of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
| | - Natasha I Bloch
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
| | - Wouter van der Bijl
- Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Maria Cortazar-Chinarro
- Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- MEMEG Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
| | - Alexander Szorkovszky
- RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
| | - Alexander Kotrschal
- Behavioural Ecology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands
| | - Iulia Darolti
- Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Severine D Buechel
- Behavioural Ecology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands
| | - Maksym Romenskyy
- Department of Zoology/Ethology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Niclas Kolm
- Department of Zoology/Ethology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Judith E Mank
- Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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2
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Dunning J, Burke T, Hoi Hang Chan A, Ying Janet Chik H, Evans T, Schroeder J. Opposite-sex associations are linked with annual fitness, but sociality is stable over lifetime. Behav Ecol 2023; 34:315-324. [PMID: 37192923 PMCID: PMC10183206 DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arac124] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2022] [Revised: 11/27/2022] [Accepted: 12/06/2022] [Indexed: 03/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Animal sociality, an individual's propensity to associate with others, has fitness consequences through mate choice, for example, directly, by increasing the pool of prospective partners, and indirectly through increased survival, and individuals benefit from both. Annually, fitness consequences are realized through increased mating success and subsequent fecundity. However, it remains unknown whether these consequences translate to lifetime fitness. Here, we quantified social associations and their link to fitness annually and over lifetime, using a multi-generational, genetic pedigree. We used social network analysis to calculate variables representing different aspects of an individual's sociality. Sociality showed high within-individual repeatability. We found that birds with more opposite-sex associates had higher annual fitness than those with fewer, but this did not translate to lifetime fitness. Instead, for lifetime fitness, we found evidence for stabilizing selection on opposite-sex sociality, and sociality in general, suggesting that reported benefits are only short-lived in a wild population, and that selection favors an average sociality.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jamie Dunning
- Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, UK
| | - Terry Burke
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Biosciences, The University of Sheffield, UK
| | - Alex Hoi Hang Chan
- Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, UK
- Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Germany
- Max Plank Institute of Animal Behaviour, Germany
| | - Heung Ying Janet Chik
- Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Netherlands
- School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia
| | - Tim Evans
- Center for Complexity Science, Imperial College London, UK
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3
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Gartland LA, Firth JA, Laskowski KL, Jeanson R, Ioannou CC. Sociability as a personality trait in animals: methods, causes and consequences. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2021; 97:802-816. [PMID: 34894041 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12823] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2021] [Revised: 11/27/2021] [Accepted: 11/30/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Within animal populations there is variation among individuals in their tendency to be social, where more sociable individuals associate more with other individuals. Consistent inter-individual variation in 'sociability' is considered one of the major axes of personality variation in animals along with aggressiveness, activity, exploration and boldness. Not only is variation in sociability important in terms of animal personalities, but it holds particular significance for, and can be informed by, two other topics of major interest: social networks and collective behaviour. Further, knowledge of what generates inter-individual variation in social behaviour also holds applied implications, such as understanding disorders of social behaviour in humans. In turn, research using non-human animals in the genetics, neuroscience and physiology of these disorders can inform our understanding of sociability. For the first time, this review brings together insights across these areas of research, across animal taxa from primates to invertebrates, and across studies from both the laboratory and field. We show there are mixed results in whether and how sociability correlates with other major behavioural traits. Whether and in what direction these correlations are observed may differ with individual traits such as sex and body condition, as well as ecological conditions. A large body of evidence provides the proximate mechanisms for why individuals vary in their social tendency. Evidence exists for the importance of genes and their expression, chemical messengers, social interactions and the environment in determining an individual's social tendency, although the specifics vary with species and other variables such as age, and interactions amongst these proximate factors. Less well understood is how evolution can maintain consistent variation in social tendencies within populations. Shifts in the benefits and costs of social tendencies over time, as well as the social niche hypothesis, are currently the best supported theories for how variation in sociability can evolve and be maintained in populations. Increased exposure to infectious diseases is the best documented cost of a greater social tendency, and benefits include greater access to socially transmitted information. We also highlight that direct evidence for more sociable individuals being safer from predators is lacking. Variation in sociability is likely to have broad ecological consequences, but beyond its importance in the spread of infectious diseases, direct evidence is limited to a few examples related to dispersal and invasive species biology. Overall, our knowledge of inter-individual variation in sociability is highly skewed towards the proximate mechanisms. Our review also demonstrates, however, that considering research from social networks and collective behaviour greatly enriches our understanding of sociability, highlighting the need for greater integration of these approaches into future animal personality research to address the imbalance in our understanding of sociability as a personality trait.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lizzy A Gartland
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, U.K
| | - Josh A Firth
- Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, U.K
| | - Kate L Laskowski
- Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, 95616, U.S.A
| | - Raphael Jeanson
- Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (UMR5169), Centre de Biologie Intégrative, CNRS, UPS, Université de Toulouse, 31062, Toulouse, France
| | - Christos C Ioannou
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, U.K
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4
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Pimentel AFN, Lima-Maximino MG, Soares MC, Maximino C. Zebrafish cooperate while inspecting predators: experimental evidence for conditional approach. Anim Behav 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.04.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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5
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Tuliozi B, Camerlenghi E, Griggio M. Dyadic leader–follower dynamics change across situations in captive house sparrows. Behav Ecol 2021. [DOI: 10.1093/beheco/araa148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract
Individuals can behave as either leaders or followers in many taxa of collectively moving animals. Leaders initiate movements and may incur predation risks, while followers are thought to be more risk-averse. As a group encounters different challenges and ecological situations, individuals in the group may change their social role. We investigated leader and follower roles using dyads of captive house sparrow (Passer domesticus) during both exploration of a novel environment and a simulation of predator attack. During the exploration of a novel environment, individuals behaved consistently either as leaders or followers. However, in the simulated attack tests, individuals in the dyads switched their roles, with “followers” leading the escape flights and “leaders” following them. Our study provides evidence of 1) consistent differences between individuals in behavior during social escape and 2) a relationship between social roles across different situations. We suggest that such relationship hinges on individual risk-taking tendencies, which manifest through different social roles across different ecological situations. We further speculate that risk-taking individuals might gain benefits by following risk-averse individuals during an escape flight.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beniamino Tuliozi
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Via Ugo Bassi 58/B, I-35131 Padova,Italy
| | - Ettore Camerlenghi
- School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, 25 Rainforest Walk, Clayton, Victoria,Australia
| | - Matteo Griggio
- Department of Biology, University of Padova, Via Ugo Bassi 58/B, I-35131 Padova,Italy
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6
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Snijders L, Krause S, Tump AN, Breuker M, Ortiz C, Rizzi S, Ramnarine IW, Krause J, Kurvers RHJM. Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild. Commun Biol 2021; 4:94. [PMID: 33473153 PMCID: PMC7817680 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01597-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/21/2020] [Accepted: 12/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Sociality is a fundamental organizing principle across taxa, thought to come with a suite of adaptive benefits. However, making causal inferences about these adaptive benefits requires experimental manipulation of the social environment, which is rarely feasible in the field. Here we manipulated the number of conspecifics in Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in the wild, and quantified how this affected a key benefit of sociality, social foraging, by investigating several components of foraging success. As adaptive benefits of social foraging may differ between sexes, we studied males and females separately, expecting females, the more social and risk-averse sex in guppies, to benefit more from conspecifics. Conducting over 1600 foraging trials, we found that in both sexes, increasing the number of conspecifics led to faster detection of novel food patches and a higher probability of feeding following detection of the patch, resulting in greater individual resource consumption. The extent of the latter relationship differed between the sexes, with males unexpectedly exhibiting a stronger social benefit. Our study provides rare causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild, and highlights that sex differences in sociality do not necessarily imply an unequal ability to profit from the presence of others.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lysanne Snijders
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany.
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Wageningen University, 6708 PB, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Stefan Krause
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, 23562, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Alan N Tump
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Michael Breuker
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, 23562, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Chente Ortiz
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Sofia Rizzi
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Indar W Ramnarine
- Department of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
| | - Jens Krause
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ralf H J M Kurvers
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195, Berlin, Germany
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7
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Darden SK, James R, Cave JM, Brask JB, Croft DP. Trinidadian guppies use a social heuristic that can support cooperation among non-kin. Proc Biol Sci 2020; 287:20200487. [PMID: 32900316 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Cooperation among non-kin is well documented in humans and widespread in non-human animals, but explaining the occurrence of cooperation in the absence of inclusive fitness benefits has proven a significant challenge. Current theoretical explanations converge on a single point: cooperators can prevail when they cluster in social space. However, we know very little about the real-world mechanisms that drive such clustering, particularly in systems where cognitive limitations make it unlikely that mechanisms such as score keeping and reputation are at play. Here, we show that Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) use a 'walk away' strategy, a simple social heuristic by which assortment by cooperativeness can come about among mobile agents. Guppies cooperate during predator inspection and we found that when experiencing defection in this context, individuals prefer to move to a new social environment, despite having no prior information about this new social group. Our results provide evidence in non-human animals that individuals use a simple social partner updating strategy in response to defection, supporting theoretical work applying heuristics to understanding the proximate mechanisms underpinning the evolution of cooperation among non-kin.
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Affiliation(s)
- Safi K Darden
- Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, Department of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK
| | - Richard James
- Department of Physics and Centre for Networks and Collective Behaviour, University of Bath, Bath, UK
| | - James M Cave
- Department of Physics and Centre for Networks and Collective Behaviour, University of Bath, Bath, UK
| | - Josefine Bohr Brask
- Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, Department of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK
| | - Darren P Croft
- Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, Department of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK
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