Shoal composition determines foraging success in the guppy

By John R. G. Dyer, Darren P. Croft, Lesley J. Morrell, Jens Krause. 2009

230 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The composition of an animal group can impact greatly on the survival and success of its individual members. Much recent work has concentrated on behavioral variation within animal populations along the bold/shy continuum. Here, we screened individual guppies, Poecilia reticulata, for boldness using an overhead fright stimulus. We created groups consisting of 4 bold individuals (bold shoals), 4 shy individuals (shy shoals), or 2 bold and 2 shy individuals (mixed shoals). The performance of these different shoal types was then tested in a novel foraging scenario. We found that both bold and mixed shoals approached a novel feeder in less time than shy shoals. Interestingly, we found that more fish from mixed shoals fed than in either bold or shy shoals. We suggest that this can be explained by the fact that nearly all the cases where one fish was followed into the feeder by another occurred within mixed shoals and that it was almost always a shy fish following a bold one. These results suggest clear foraging benefits to shy individuals through associating with bold ones. Surprisingly, our results also suggest potential foraging benefits to bold individuals through associating with shy individuals. This study highlights a possible mechanism by which interindividual variation in behavioral types is maintained in a population. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/69487039c0952265f0b564d694c7bb87d1bb2568

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Citations in the corpus

Individual personality traits influence group exploration in a feral guppy population (2014, background): “For example, groups comprised of shy and bold fish were faster to explore a novel arena and sample a foraging patch than those containing only shy or only bold individuals (Dyer et al. 2009a).”
The effect of variation in boldness and aggressiveness on the reproductive success of zebrafish (2012, background): “…reticulata: Smith & Blumstein 2010), are more likely to become dominant (zebrafish, Danio rerio: Dahlbom et al. 2011), be more successful at foraging (guppies: Dyer et al. 2009), and explore novel environments and disperse more Animal and Plant Sciences, TN, U.K. o). dy of Animal Behaviour.”
Personality counts: the effect of boldness on shoal choice in three-spined sticklebacks (2009, background): “On the other hand, recent work on guppies, Poecilia reticulata, by Dyer et al. (2009) found that bold shoals have higher foraging success than shy shoals, so focal fish might be trying to associate with the shoal most likely to find food.”
Individual sociability and choosiness between shoal types (2012, unknown): “2008), the foraging success of all shoal members (Dyer et al. 2009) and even dispersal from the group (Cote et al.”
Personality differences explain leadership in barnacle geese (2009, background): “002 type of the group members, but most studies use personality measurements assessed in a social context (Magnhagen & Staffan 2005; Sih & Watters 2005; Dyer et al. 2008; Michelena et al. 2008) thereby providing no independent measure of a personality trait, because the social context may alter the ”