Logo image
Repeatability and heritability of social reaction norms in a wild agamid lizard
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Repeatability and heritability of social reaction norms in a wild agamid lizard

Kasha Strickland, David J Mitchell, Coralie Delme and Celine Frere
Evolution, Vol.75(8), pp.1953-1965
2021
PMID: 34184766
url
https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14298View
Published Version

Abstract

Behavioral plasticity eastern water dragon quantitative genetics social behavior social plasticity
In the evolutionary transition from solitary to group living, it should be adaptive for animals to respond to the environment and choose when to socialize to reduce conflict and maximize access to resources. Due to the associated proximate mechanisms (e.g. neural network, endocrine system), it is likely that this behavior varies between individuals according to genetic and non‐genetic factors. We used long‐term behavioral and genetic data from a population of eastern water dragons (Intellagama lesueurii) to explore variation in plasticity of social behavior, in response to sex ratio and density. To do so, we modeled individual variation in social reaction norms, which describe individuals’ mean behavior and behavioral responses to changes in their environment, and partitioned variance into genetic and non‐genetic components. We found that reaction norms were repeatable over multiple years, suggesting that individuals consistently differed in their behavioral responses to changes in the social environment. Despite high repeatability of reaction norm components, trait heritability was below our limit of detection based on power analyses (h2 < 0.12), leading to very little power to detect heritability of plasticity. This was in contrast to a relatively greater amount of variance associated with environmental effects. This could suggest that mechanisms such as social learning and frequency‐dependence may shape variance in reaction norms, which will be testable as the dataset grows.

Details

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics & Heredity

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#15 Life on Land

Source: SDGs from InCites

Logo image