Social Personality Trait And Fitness

Main Category: Veterinary
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 28 Aug 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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Animal personalities are defined as consistent individual differences across time and context. We recently demonstrated that social personality traits (i.e. sociability) exist in the common lizard and that the variation of sociability provides an explanation for variable habitat preferences within a given species.

Here, we showed that the variation in sociability also affect individual success across habitats of different population densities. 'Asocial' juveniles survived better in low-density populations than in high-density populations, while 'social' females reproduced better.

In conclusion, 'social' and 'asocial' lizards seek different habitats (high versus low-density) to match their capacities to succeed in a specific habitat.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences