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Individual personality does not predict learning performance in a foraging context in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata.

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Guenther,  A.
Research Group Behavioural Ecology of Individual Differences (Guenther), Department Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Kniel, N., Guenther, A., & Godin, J.-G. (2020). Individual personality does not predict learning performance in a foraging context in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata. Animal Behaviour, 167, 3-12. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.07.007.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0006-B47A-6
Abstract
Considerable interindividual variation in behaviour, including learning ability and personality, exists
within populations. Recent research has suggested that these two traits might covary; that is, the
expression of certain personality traits might be correlated with learning ability. We experimentally
tested this hypothesis under controlled laboratory conditions using female Trinidadian guppies. We
tested for individual learning performance, measured as time to learn an association between a physical
object and the presentation of food, both without (individual learning) and with (social learning) public
information from conspecifics. Further, we quantified three ecologically relevant personality traits in
individual fish in a fixed sequence: namely, exploration of a novel environment, sociability as the tendency
to associate socially with conspecifics and boldness in the face of a simulated threat of predation.
Each of these three personality traits was significantly repeatable, but they were not intercorrelated (i.e.
did not form a behavioural syndrome). Individuals that needed fewer trials to feed from the objects
initially had a higher probability of reaching the learning criterion and needed fewer trials to do so, but
this learning performance was not related to repeatable personality traits across individuals. More
exploratory individuals tended to learn faster during individual learning. When excluding individuals
that had not learned, more social individuals were significantly faster at associative learning during social
learning than less social individuals. Overall, we found no compelling evidence for any link between
individual personality traits and learning performance, nor between the two modes of learning. Our
results therefore suggest that individual personality does not predict learning performance and the
observed independence of the two modes of learning tested suggests a lack of a domain-general learning
capacity in female Trinidadian guppies, at least under our experimental conditions.