Search results for " Behavior"

Personality predicts social dominance in female zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, in a feeding context.

2011

6 pages; International audience; Although personality has been defined as a suite of correlated behaviours, most studies of animal personality actually consider correlations between a few traits. We examined the repeatability and correlational structure of five potential personality traits (activity, neophobia, exploratory tendencies, risk-taking behaviour and obstinacy), in female zebra finches. In addition, we assessed to what extent personality influenced social dominance in a feeding context in this gregarious species. All personality traits were found to be highly repeatable within individuals. In addition, except for obstinacy, all of them were related to each other, thus defining a b…

Polyterritoriality and deception

2011

Discounting delayed monetary rewards and decision making in behavioral addictions - A comparison between patients with gambling disorder and internet…

2019

Abstract Behavior addictions, such as Gambling Disorder and Internet Gaming Disorder, have been demonstrated to have severe negative impact. Heightened impulsivity, deficits in decision making, and cognitive biases in the preference of immediate rewards have been shown to be crucial aspects in addictive disorders. While for Gambling Disorder (GD), dysfunctional decision making has been documented before, data for Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) are still underrepresented. In order to allow for a direct comparison of both disorders, we assessed different measures of impulsivity (trait, impulsive choice, and decision making) in a clinical sample. N = 31 patients meeting criteria for GD and n =…

Brain representation of action observation in human infants.

2015

Imitative learning has long been established as extremely important for early development. However, neural mechanisms involved in early imitative behaviours are still areas of active research. Neurophysiological and brain-imaging studies have been recently performed that provide initial evidence of brain activation associated with action observation in the first months of life. In this review we examine all studies exploring the effects of action observation on brain function assessed by means of non-invasive brain-mapping techniques. Seventeen papers were selected as a result of our literature search. The strongest evidence for a neural signature of action observation comes from studies ex…

Diverse societies are more productive: a lesson from ants

2012

The fitness consequences of animal personalities (also known as behavioural syndromes) have recently been studied in several solitary species. However, the adaptive significance of collective personalities in social insects and especially of behavioural variation among group members remains largely unexplored. Although intracolonial behavioural variation is an important component of division of labour, and as such a key feature for the success of societies, empirical links between behavioural variation and fitness are scarce. We investigated aggression, exploration and brood care behaviour in Temnothorax longispinosus ant colonies. We focused on two distinct aspects: intercolonial variabil…

Prosocial reasoning and emotions in young offenders and non-offenders

2017

Abstract The aim of this study was to analyse the cognitive processes (prosocial moral reasoning, perspective taking) and emotional processes (empathic concern, emotional instability, state-trait anger) which interact in predicting aggressive behaviour and prosocial behaviour of adolescents who have committed a crime and those who have not, for the purpose of establishing the predictor variables in both groups. Participants were 440 adolescents, 220 of them young offenders residing in four youth detention centres in Valencia, in which they were serving court sentences (67.3% men and 32.7% women). The other 220 were enrolled in public and private schools within the metropolitan area of Valen…

Sex-specific selection on energy metabolism - selection coefficients for winter survival

2010

Selection for different fitness optima between sexes is supposed to operate on several traits. As fitness-related traits are often energetically costly, selection should also act directly on the energetics of individuals. However, efforts to examine the relationship between fitness and components of the energy budget are surprisingly scarce. We investigated the effects of basal metabolic rate (BMR, the minimum energy required for basic life functions) and body condition on long-term survival (8 winter months) with manipulated densities in enclosed populations of bank voles (Myodes glareolus). Here, we show that survival selection on BMR was clearly sex-specific but density-independent. Both…

Preprinting is positively associated with early career researcher status in ecology and evolution.

2021

Abstract The usage of preprint servers in ecology and evolution is increasing, allowing research to be rapidly disseminated and available through open access at no cost. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) often have limited experience with the peer review process, which can be challenging when trying to build publication records and demonstrate research ability for funding opportunities, scholarships, grants, or faculty positions. ECRs face different challenges relative to researchers with permanent positions and established research programs. These challenges might also vary according to institution size and country, which are factors associated with the availability of funding for open acces…

Individual differences in behavioral consistency are related to sequential access to resources and body condition in a producer-scrounger game

2014

Investigating the evolution of consistent between-individual behavioral differences necessitates to explain the emergence of within-individual consistency. Relying on a recent mathematical model, we here test the prediction that the emergence of differences in within-individual consistency is related to the sequential access to resources in a frequency-dependent foraging game. To this end we used flocks of zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) engaged in a producer-scrounger foraging game. Tactic investment (i.e., the proportion of hops with the head down) significantly predicted successful tactic use (i.e., the proportion of seeds produced). In support of predictions, we found that individua…

Gene expression patterns associated with caste and reproductive status in ants: worker-specific genes are more derived than queen-specific ones.

2013

Variation in gene expression leads to phenotypic diversity and plays a central role in caste differentiation of eusocial insect species. In social Hymenoptera, females with the same genetic background can develop into queens or workers, which are characterized by divergent morphologies, behaviours and lifespan. Moreover, many social insects exhibit behaviourally distinct worker castes, such as brood-tenders and foragers. Researchers have just started to explore which genes are differentially expressed to achieve this remarkable phenotypic plasticity. Although the queen is normally the only reproductive individual in the nest, following her removal, young brood-tending workers often develop …