Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Department of Evolutionary Zoology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen 4010, Hungary.
Proc Biol Sci. 2011 Feb 22;278(1705):628-33. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1326. Epub 2010 Sep 8.
The concept of animal personalities has recently become of major interest as researchers began to wonder why animals within a given population show consistent behaviour across situations and contexts, what led to the evolution of such behavioural inflexibility and what mechanisms might underlie the phenomenon. A recent model explains individual differences in a population as the result of trade-off between present and future reproduction. We tested this model on the two wing morphs, i.e. short-winged (brachypterous) and long-winged (macropterous) specimens of the firebug (Pyrrhocoris apterus). Since it has been already demonstrated that the two wing morphs differ in their life-history strategies, this species is an ideal subject to test whether the specimens with different life-history strategies have different personalities as well. The results show that individuals behave consistently over time and across contexts, meaning observed bugs do have personalities. We also have found that in females, the two wing morphs have different personalities supporting the theoretical predictions, i.e. winged ones, which are supposed to have lower future reproductive value, are braver and more exploratory. We found no difference between the morphs in males. Differences in reproductive investment might explain this discrepancy between the sexes.
动物个性的概念最近引起了极大的关注，因为研究人员开始想知道为什么在给定的种群中，动物会在不同的情况下和环境中表现出一致的行为，导致这种行为灵活性进化的原因是什么，以及可能是什么机制导致了这种现象。最近的一个模型将种群中的个体差异解释为当前和未来繁殖之间权衡的结果。我们在两种翅型（短翅型和长翅型）的红火蚁（Pyrrhocoris apterus）上测试了这个模型。由于已经证明两种翅型在它们的生活史策略上存在差异，因此这个物种是一个理想的测试对象，可以检验具有不同生活史策略的个体是否也具有不同的个性。结果表明，个体在时间和环境上的行为表现一致，这意味着观察到的红火蚁确实具有个性。我们还发现，在雌性中，两种翅型具有不同的个性，这支持了理论预测，即具有较低未来繁殖价值的有翅个体更勇敢、更具探索性。我们在雄性中没有发现两种翅型之间的差异。生殖投资的差异可能解释了这种性别差异。
