Lifetime stability of social traits in bottlenose dolphins

Taylor Evans; Ewa Krzyszczyk; Céline Frère; Janet Mann

doi:10.1038/s42003-021-02292-x

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Lifetime stability of social traits in bottlenose dolphins

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Lifetime stability of social traits in bottlenose dolphins

Taylor Evans, Ewa Krzyszczyk, Céline Frère and Janet Mann

Communications Biology, Vol.4, pp.1-8

2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02292-x

PMID: 34145380

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Abstract

Animal Behaviour

Behavioural Ecology

Behavioral phenotypic traits or “animal personalities” drive critical evolutionary processes such as fitness, disease and information spread. Yet the stability of behavioral traits, essential by definition, has rarely been measured over developmentally significant periods of time, limiting our understanding of how behavioral stability interacts with ontogeny. Based on 32 years of social behavioral data for 179 wild bottlenose dolphins, we show that social traits (associate number, time alone and in large groups) are stable from infancy to late adulthood. Multivariate analysis revealed strong relationships between these stable metrics within individuals, suggesting a complex behavioral syndrome comparable to human extraversion. Maternal effects (particularly vertical social learning) and sex-specific reproductive strategies are likely proximate and ultimate drivers for these patterns. We provide rare empirical evidence to demonstrate the persistence of social behavioral traits over decades in a non-human animal.

Details

Title: Lifetime stability of social traits in bottlenose dolphins
Authors: Taylor Evans (Author) - Georgetown University
Ewa Krzyszczyk (Author) - Georgetown University
Céline Frère (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Janet Mann (Author) - Georgetown University
Publication details: Communications Biology, Vol.4, pp.1-8
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2021
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02292-x
ISSN: 2399-3642
PMID: 34145380
Copyright note: © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99548407702621
Output Type: Journal article

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Web Of Science research areas: Biology

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