Meeting Abstract
The origin and function of behavioral traits or personalities (called syndromes) is an increasing field of study in biology. What is lacking from this extensive field of research is a connection between the behavioral syndromes as measured in the laboratory to the behavioral and evolutionary consequences of these syndromes within natural field settings. To assess the importance that personalities may play in an organism’s natural setting, individual crayfish were run through five separate and distinct behavioral assays in a lab setting to determine their behavioral syndrome across a broad spectrum of behavioral situations. Once animals had completed the random sequence of assays, they were placed in a natural stream and videotaped for twenty-four hours. The outcomes of each laboratory assay were used to place individual crayfish on a spectrum of boldness and shyness within the population that was tested. This spectrum was then used to compare the behavioral responses from the field set up and what was observed in the lab setting. Laboratory results show a broad spectrum of behaviors along the bold-shy spectrum and that animals that were bold within one assay typically were bold for other assays. In field tests, bold and shy animals exhibited different behavioral responses to threats of predation, competition with other species of crayfish as well as other ecological interactions.
