Meeting Abstract
Alternative reproductive tactics may fit other paradigms that consider behavior differences, including stress-coping styles and personality: consistent individual behavioral differences in multiple contexts or consistent within-individual behavioral correlations. Behavior types often differ in neuroendocrine measures. While many vertebrates show such behavior variation, the ecological contexts favoring these types are less clear. Studying adult males in an island and a mainland population of the Italian Wall Lizard, Podarcis sicula , we asked if personality/coping styles typically described for a single population could represent extremes of a continuum, with one personality (less reactive) expressed on the island and the other (more reactive) on the mainland. In the field, we measured either antipredator behavior following a simulated predator approach (flight initiation distance, FID; hiding duration, HD), or breeding-season plasma testosterone (T) and corticosterone (CORT; baseline and 30-min post capture) level in two sets of males, and in the lab we measured behavior and brain monoamines for another set. Island males had lower condition (scaled mass index), shorter HD, lower T, lower aggression, higher open-field activity and lower brain levels of norepinephrine and epinephrine. Novel object exploration, FID, baseline CORT, 30-min CORT, brain dopamine and serotonin did not differ. Future work should examine more populations, and identify selective factors, such as differences in predators and life-history measures, that favor expression of different stress-coping styles in different populations.
