School of Marine Science and Engineering, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK.
Biol Lett. 2013 Aug 28;9(5):20130592. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0592. Print 2013 Oct 23.
Variation in behaviour occurs at multiple levels, including between individuals (personality) and between situations (plasticity). Behaviour also varies within individuals, and intra-individual variation (IIV) in behaviour describes within-individual residual variance in behaviour that remains after the effects of obvious external and internal influences on behaviour have been accounted for. IIV thus describes how predictable an individual's behaviour is. Differences in predictability, between individuals and between situations, might be biologically significant. For example, behaving unpredictably under predation threat might reduce the chance of capture. Here, we investigated the duration of startle responses in hermit crabs, in the presence and absence of a predator cue. Individuals differed in startle response duration (personality) and while individuals also varied in their sensitivity to risk, mean response time was greater in the presence of a predator (plasticity). Moreover, IIV was greater in the presence of a predator, providing some of the first evidence that the facultative injection of unpredictability into behaviour might represent a strategy for dealing with risk.
行为在多个层次上发生变化，包括个体之间（个性）和情境之间（可塑性）。行为也在个体内部发生变化，个体内变异（IIV）描述了行为在明显的外部和内部影响行为的作用之后，行为仍然存在的个体内剩余方差。因此，IIV 描述了个体的行为有多可预测。个体之间和情境之间的可预测性差异可能具有生物学意义。例如，在捕食者威胁下表现出不可预测的行为可能会降低被捕食的机会。在这里，我们研究了寄居蟹在有和没有捕食者线索时的惊跳反应持续时间。个体的惊跳反应持续时间存在差异（个性），而个体对风险的敏感性也存在差异，在存在捕食者的情况下，平均反应时间更长（可塑性）。此外，在存在捕食者的情况下，IIV 更大，这为 facultative 地将不可预测性注入行为中可能代表一种应对风险的策略提供了一些初步证据。
