How are individual learning, social learning and ‘personality’ traits connected?

• Applicant: Dr. Nina Kniel
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 370639394

Variation in biological traits is pervasive in natural populations and necessary for the action of selection and thus evolution. Despite recent advances, much work remains to elucidate the mechanisms generating and maintaining biological variation, and the consequences of the latter for the processes of selection and evolution. Such variation is exemplified, for example, as differences in learning ability and ‘personality’ traits between individuals. However, these traits have mostly been studied independently of each other. Limited and contradictory results available to date call for further investigation to understand the mechanisms of individual and social learning and their relationships with an animal’s personality. Here, I propose to test the general hypothesis that individual learning, social learning and personality are linked phenotypically using the Trinidadian guppy as a model study species. Whether and how population-level variation in individual and social learning may play a role in maintaining inter-individual differences in personality and, vice versa, whether individual personality traits facilitate or constrain learning is of considerable interest. To my knowledge, this potential linkage has yet to be characterised in any species. Therefore, I plan to first test individual fish for three personality traits, namely exploration tendency (in a novel environment), predator inspection (boldness) and sociability (shoaling tendency). The same fish will then be tested for their individual learning ability (finding a new food source in a maze) and social learning ability (finding a new food source in a maze; mate-choice copying). Using these data, I will then test for possible relationships between i) individual personality and public information use, ii) personality and individual learning ability, and iii) individual learning ability and public information use. Lastly, I will investigate whether there are relationships between i) individual learning ability and ii) personality and an individual’s suitability as a model during mate-choice copying, as the identity/quality of the model individual can influence mate-choice copying. I anticipate that my proposed research will yield new knowledge, which will importantly contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how individual personality interacts with learning processes in animals, and provide insights into the dynamics of social information networks. If there are indeed links, as suggested by some recent research, then such phenotypic correlations might partly explain the large variance in behaviour observed among individual animals in nature. The relative use of public information, and thus social learning, might then not only be context dependent, but also dependent on an individual’s personality. If so, future research would need to consider individual personality differences to better understand individual and social learning in different ecological contexts.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Canada
• Host: Professor Jean-Guy J. Godin, Ph.D.