Lecture 8

Question 1

Who was the first person to categorise personality in a way that it could be put in a table?

Answer 1

Galen, 129AD, Greece

Question 2

How did Galen, 129AD, Greece work out which personality categories people are in?

Answer 2

Dissected corpses

Question 3

How many personality type categories are in Myer-Briggs personality types, 1944?

Answer 3

16

Question 4

What are the two axis on Myers-Briggs personality types table? (16 categories)

Answer 4

. Extroverted- Introverted
. Judging- extraverted
(So can be various combinations of that)

Question 5

What can the Myers-Briggs personality types be apply to?

Answer 5

Only applies to humans

Question 6

How did McCrae and Costa Jr (1989) categorise personality types?

Answer 6

Using the five factor model.
Use continuous categorisations (spectrums) instead of using categories. So, you have 5 dimensions/ factors and you a number for each of these (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism)

Question 7

What can the 5 five factor model be applied to?

Answer 7

Humans and animals

Question 8

In animal research, the concept of personality has been used to refer to what?

Answer 8

The existence of behavioural and physiological differences among individuals of the same species, which are stable over time and across different contexts or situations

Question 9

In the concept of personality the behavioural and physiological differences among individuals of the same species has to be stable over time. What does this mean?

Answer 9

Means that personalities have to be stable in that if an individual is aggressive when you test it if you go back a few weeks later it still has to be aggressive and a couple of different situations as well

Question 10

In animal research, what have personalities been referred to as?

Answer 10

Temperament, behaviour syndromes m, coping styles, or simply predispositions

Question 11

How is behavioural ecology unrealistic in many ways?

Answer 11

It assumes that things just evolve to optima

Question 12

Where does animal personality tend to be studied?

Answer 12

Both in the lab and field

Question 13

What is female pre-copulatory cannibalism (e.g. six-spotted fishing spider)?

Answer 13

Female eats male during sexual interactions but before copulation- so the male approaches and the female eats the male before copulation has occurred

Question 14

What is the suggested reason for female pre-copulatory cannibalism in some spiders?

Answer 14

It is suggested that the reason it evolved like this is because it is useful for juvenile spiders to be aggressive

Question 15

What were the findings of the Johnston and Sih’s 2005 lab study looking at hetero-specific prey? (Looking at spiders with precopulatory sexual cannibalism)

Answer 15

. Voracity towards hetero-specific prey results in high feeding rates, large adult size, and increased fecundity (so being aggressive to different species of prey is useful)
. Juvenile and adult voracity are positively correlated (i.e. voracity is a consistent trait over ontogeny)
. Voracity (so being aggressive) towards hetero-specific prey is positively correlated with precopulatory sexual cannibalism
. Assays of antipredator behaviour further released positive correlations between boldness towards predators, voracity and precopulatory sexual cannibalism

Question 16

What were the conclusions from Johnston and Sih’s 2005 lab study looking at precopulatory sexual cannibalism and hetero-specific prey?

Answer 16

Precopulatory sexual cannibalism in D. triton is part of a behavioural syndrome spanning at least three major contexts: foraging, predator avoidance and mating (basically found that it is beneficial to be aggressive as a juvenile)

Question 17

What has been shown to positively correlate with boldness in three spined sticklebacks?

Answer 17

Aggressive behaviour

Question 18

How does the introduction of rainbow trout (predator) to a low predated population of sticklebacks alter their behaviour?

Answer 18

Sticklebacks from a low predated population show no boldness-aggressiveness correlation, but after predation of half the population by rainbow trout the correlation appears

Question 19

What is the suggested reason for why stickleback populations show no boldness-aggressiveness correlation but after predation of half the population by rainbow trout there is a correlation?

Answer 19

Is suggested that predators take the ones that do not have this positive correlation between boldness-aggressiveness. So suggest that there is some sort of phenotypic plasticity that shifts behaviour

Question 20

Describe what the sticklebacks living in small, eutrophic lakes (what they feed on, look like etc.)

Answer 20

. Feeds from the bottom and takes benthic prey
. Cannibalises eggs in the nest, so males protect the nest in these sticklebacks
. Conspecifics come along and try to eat the eggs, so the males of this type diversionary display to take them away from the nest and the males have evolved to be drab so they don’t attract conspecifics to the eggs and they don’t dance about too much on the bottom of the lake

Question 21

Describe eutrophic lakes

Answer 21

Have a lot of farmer fertiliser in them and they have a lot of weeds growing in them and they are fairly low in oxygen

Question 22

Describe oligotrophic lakes

Answer 22

The ones that are fairly healthy, often have many nutrients in them

Question 23

Describe the sticklebacks that live in deep, oligotrophic lakes

Answer 23

. Fatter and have bigger mouths than the ones in eutrophic lakes
. Feed in the water column
. Cannibalism of eggs in nests has been lost because eggs don’t live in the water column they live at the bottom
. The diversionary display is not needed so that has been lost
. Males being pretty has come back because they don’t care about drawing attention to themselves
. Have planktonic heads

Question 24

What is agonistic (aggressive) behaviour correlated with in great tits?

Answer 24

Exploratory behaviour

Question 25

How are agonism and exploratory behaviours correlated in great tits?

Answer 25

Slow explorers tend to be less aggressive

Question 26

How were Roach used to look at how personality affects migration?

Answer 26

. Caught some Roach from a lake
. Then assayed them in the lab for boldness and they showed that it was personality that was stable across time and context
. They put tags on fins and put them back in the lake
. Then studied their partial migration for the next few years
(There are a bunch of streams coming off the lakes and they migrate in these streams but some stay in the lake and don’t do that)

Question 27

What did they find when they used Roach to study how boldness influenced migratory behaviour?

Answer 27

(. Boldness is usually the risk taken by the animal)
Found that individuals that leave refuge readily tend to be migrants and we increased boldness.
Those that don’t leave the refuge in the lab readily tend to be residents

Question 28

What is the parasite that wood frogs get?

Answer 28

Echinostome trematode

Question 29

Give examples of animals using behaviour to remove parasites

Answer 29

Tadpoles can have echinostome trematode and use behaviour to dislodge them.
Fish in a tank may also rub themselves against the side of the tank trying to dislodge the parasites.
So behaviour is quite important in removing parasites in these animals

Question 30

Suggest 4 ways personalities could drive the formation of new species
With example of how it would happen

Answer 30

1) personality and speciation via peripheral isolated- bold and aggressive individuals often disperse further hereby producing new founder populations
2) personality and immigrant inviability- individuals with the wrong suite of personality traits all likely to be selected against when dispersing into a new environment, reducing gene flow between populations
3) personality and assortative mating- individuals with different personality traits are less likely to mate because it would produce maladapted offspring
4) personality and temporal reproductive isolation- e.g. bold individuals are often more active in the presence of predators. This could produce different activity patterns at different times of day, impacting likelihood of different personality types meeting and mating

Question 31

Anelosimus studiosus is a social spider that allows species of spider to use it. What are two species it allows to use it?

Answer 31

. Agelenopsis emertoni
. Larinioides cornutus

(The interaction between these species can affect the fitness)

Question 32

What is the adaptive hypotheses for female pre-copulatory cannibalism?

Answer 32

Female obtains essential nutrients

Question 33

What is the evolutionary constraints hypotheses for female pre-copulatory cannibalism?

Answer 33

“Aggressive spill over”

Adaptive aggressive voracity as juvenile “spills over” into adulthood (would be a constraint)

Question 34

What is assortive mating?

Answer 34

Is when individuals with a like behaviour are more likely to breed with each other. (So that suggests that if that happens, if you get mating based on personality then that can produce the conditions for a formation of new species)