Laboratory measures of boldness correlate to ecological niche in
threespine stickleback
Abstract
Research on among individual variation in behavior has increased rapidly
in recent years. It is intuitively appealing that among individual
variation in behavior has ecological consequences and among the most
likely to be affected is trophic niche. Bold individuals, with the
tendency to be explorative and risk tolerant, can be less likely to
alter their foraging behavior across contexts and therefore forage more
consistently. Stable isotopes are a useful tool to retrospectively
estimate ecological niche and have been found to correlate to foraging
behavior in the wild. It is now pressing to extent studies to further
examine the ecological or evolutionary relevance of personality. We
examined if common behavioral traits were correlated to ecological niche
in the wild using a rapid behavioral assay and δ13C and δ15N stable
isotopes from fin and muscle reflecting ecological niche for the
previous weeks and months. We found that latency to explore, as a proxy
for boldness, correlated to values of δ13C with bolder fish having lower
δ13C values. Moreover, latency to explore also explained variation in
the change in individual stable isotope niche over time. These results
highlight the long-term ecological importance of among individual
variation in behavior and are among the first to support a correlation
of laboratory measures of behavior and ecological niche in the wild.