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Correlations begin at home: drivers of co-occurrence patterns in personality and cognitive ability in wild populations of zebrafish

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Abstract

Aquatic habitats are extremely dynamic, with constantly changing ecological factors, which has now been exacerbated due to human-induced rapid environmental change. In such variable environments, it becomes essential to understand how personality and cognition in organisms affect the adaptability of individuals to different habitat conditions. To test this, we studied how personality-related traits as well as cognitive ability differ between populations of wild-caught zebrafish (Danio rerio) from habitats that differed in various environmental factors. We measured emergence into a novel environment as an indicator of boldness, and performance in a spatial task inferred from feeding latencies in a maze over repeated trials to assess learning and memory, as an indicator of cognitive ability. We found that personality affects cognition and although bolder fish are better learners, they show poorer retention of memory across populations. Although personality and cognitive ability varied between habitats, the patterns of their correlations remained similar within each population. However, the individual traits (such as sex and size) that were drivers of personality and cognition differed between the habitats, suggesting that not only do behavioral traits vary between populations, but also the factors that are important in determining them. Personality and cognitive ability and the correlations between these traits determine how well an organism performs in its habitat, as well as how likely it is to find new habitats and adapt to them. Studying these across wild zebrafish populations helps predict performance efficiencies among individuals and also explains how fish adapt to extremely dynamic environments that can lead to variation in behavioral traits and correlations between them. This study not only sheds light on the drivers of interindividual variation and co-occurrence patterns of personality and cognition, but also individual and population factors that might have an effect on them.

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Data obtained from observations will be made available by the authors on request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, (IISER Kolkata), India for providing infrastructural support, and Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India, for providing a Senior Research Fellowship to DKD. Authors also thank Mr. Prasenjit Pan for collection of wild zebrafish populations from different habitats, and all members of the Fish Ecology and Behaviour Lab, IISER Kolkata, for lab and population maintenance.

Funding

AB received institutional financial support in the form of Academic Research Funds from Indian Institute of Science Kolkata (India). DKD was funded through a junior and senior research fellowship from the Council of Science and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India.

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  1. Department of Biological Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, Mohanpur, West Bengal, 741246, India

    Danita K. Daniel & Anuradha Bhat

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Contributions

DKD and AB conceived the goals and the design of the study. DKD conducted the experimental assays, analyzed the videos, performed the statistical analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. AB procured funding and supervised the project. DKD and AB wrote and edited the final version of manuscript. All authors read and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Anuradha Bhat.

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The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Guidelines outlined by the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA), Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India were followed in all aspects of maintenance and experimentation. All experimental protocols followed here have been approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee's (IAEC) and guidelines of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, Government of India (Approval number IISERK/IAEC/AP/2021/70).

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Daniel, D.K., Bhat, A. Correlations begin at home: drivers of co-occurrence patterns in personality and cognitive ability in wild populations of zebrafish. Anim Cogn 26, 1381–1394 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01787-w

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