Meeting Abstract
Members of social groups often show tremendous variation that can be understood by classifying individuals according to their specific type or role within a group. Across diverse taxa, the molecular traits underlying social types or roles have been well-studied, but the molecular correlates of individual variation have been difficult to experimentally examine. Our research addresses this limitation by utilizing an integrative approach to quantify co-variance across behavioral and molecular traits in response to changing social conditions over time. Here, we examined naturalistic groups of the highly social African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, to understand how patterns of behavioral and molecular traits contribute to individual variation across contexts. A. burtoni males are either bright, territorial, aggressive, and reproductively active (socially dominant, DOM) or dull, non-territorial, and reproductively suppressed (subordinate, SUB). We assayed behavior, physiology, and transcriptomes of key brain regions involved in social behavior before and after defined environmental, social, and physiological perturbations. Our results demonstrate 1) a strong relationship between patterns of space use, social behavior, and physiology that suggest novel DOM styles, 2) behavioral resilience and physiological flexibility in response to perturbations, and 3) complex variance structure at the molecular level. This research provides insight into the causes and consequences of individual variation across levels of organization that can give rise to consistent behavior over time and context.
