Ehlman Sean M, Scherer Ulrike, Bierbach David, Stärk Luka, Beese Marvin, Wolf Max
Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587 Berlin, Germany.
SCIoI Exzellenzcluster, 10587 Berlin, Germany.
iScience. 2025 Jul 23;28(9):113189. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113189. eCollection 2025 Sep 19.
Developmental plasticity at the behavioral repertoire level allows animals to incrementally adjust their behavioral phenotypes to match their environments through ontogeny. Quantifying this plasticity in sufficient resolution across substantial periods of development, however, has been challenging. Here, we use high-resolution tracking to monitor 45 genetically identical Amazon mollies ( reared in near-identical environments over their first four weeks of life. We analyze behavior at 0.2-s resolution to assess plasticity across entire behavioral repertoires. Testing a key prediction from Bayesian models-that plasticity should decline in stable environments-we measure plasticity using both individual behavioral metrics and a bespoke "behavioral entropy" approach in a multi-dimensional phenotype space. Surprisingly, and despite closely conforming to model assumptions, we find a consistent initial two-week in movement plasticity before a decline. These results challenge expectations about how plasticity unfolds early in life and highlight the importance of continuous behavioral tracking for evaluating developmental theories.
行为 repertoire 水平的发育可塑性使动物能够在个体发育过程中逐步调整其行为表型以匹配环境。然而，在发育的相当长时期内以足够的分辨率量化这种可塑性一直具有挑战性。在这里，我们使用高分辨率跟踪来监测 45 只基因相同的亚马逊帆鳉（在其生命的前四周在近乎相同的环境中饲养）。我们以 0.2 秒的分辨率分析行为，以评估整个行为 repertoire 的可塑性。测试来自贝叶斯模型的一个关键预测——即在稳定环境中可塑性应该下降——我们在多维表型空间中使用个体行为指标和定制的“行为熵”方法来测量可塑性。令人惊讶的是，尽管紧密符合模型假设，但我们发现在下降之前运动可塑性有一个持续两周的初始阶段。这些结果挑战了关于可塑性在生命早期如何展开的预期，并强调了连续行为跟踪对评估发育理论的重要性。
