The emergence and development of behavioral individuality in clonal fish

Kate L. Laskowski (), David Bierbach, Jolle W. Jolles, Carolina Doran and Max Wolf
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Kate L. Laskowski: Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries
David Bierbach: Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries
Jolle W. Jolles: Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), Campus UAB. Edifici C.
Carolina Doran: Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries
Max Wolf: Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Behavioral individuality is a ubiquitous phenomenon in animal populations, yet the origins and developmental trajectories of individuality, especially very early in life, are still a black box. Using a high-resolution tracking system, we mapped the behavioral trajectories of genetically identical fish (Poecilia formosa), separated immediately after birth into identical environments, over the first 10 weeks of their life at 3 s resolution. We find that (i) strong behavioral individuality is present at the very first day after birth, (ii) behavioral differences at day 1 of life predict behavior up to at least 10 weeks later, and (iii) patterns of individuality strengthen gradually over developmental time. Our results establish a null model for how behavioral individuality can develop in the absence of genetic and environmental variation and provide experimental evidence that later-in-life individuality can be strongly shaped by factors pre-dating birth like maternal provisioning, epigenetics and pre-birth developmental stochasticity.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34113-y

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