Personality is not a concept often discussed in reference to fish. It is much easier for us to recognize and distinguish a variety of personalities in animals such as dogs, horses, or even birds. There isn't currently very much scientific information on animal personality at all. However, recent research focused on personality, communication, and behavior in fish.
Matessi et al. (2010) investigated how social changes in the environment as well as different personality types affected the communication of male Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens. They noted that these temperamental differences may affect the fitness of both individuals and populations, but there has been little research on personalities in animals.
In this study 49 fish were categorized into one of two "personality" types, either persistent or sporadic, and their behavior observed interacting visually with a variety of different neighbors (other fish). The persistent fish tended to patrol their borders and send aggressive signals to neighbors the majority of the time, while those deemed sporadic fluctuated between interaction patterns similar to those of the persistent fish and less active spells where they stayed away from the neighbors. Over the course of the experiment, all of the fish were exposed to a variety of social environments in terms of number and type of neighbors. It was found that the different environments did indeed have an effect on fish behavior and signaling. While persistent fish did not appear to demonstrate much change, sporadic fish behaved in some respects more like persistent fish, although they tended to remain in areas where they could obtain information about neighbors while avoiding any actual interaction with them.
One interesting aspect of this research was several comparisons the authors made between fish behavior and bird behavior. They compared the different reactions of the fish to those of songbirds in playback trials, particularly in reference to differentiating between strangers and neighbors. The comparison was initially surprising - it hadn't occurred to me to compare fish to birds, but this was certainly an interesting way to do so. The authors also noted that these are extremely inconclusive results - further testing with much larger sample sizes would be required for more definitive resolution. If we think about the many ways personality can affect communication and behavior, we can see that there is still a lot to investigate. Hopefully we will see further research into this fascinating subject.
Anyone interested in reading the original article can find it here.
Dana Mirsky (2)
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This really surprised me. I had never read about animals having personalities. I have owned a few beta fish before but I always thought they were all aggressive towards other males. I had no idea they could have different personality traits. The comparison between bird songs and fish behavior is definitely something I would have never thought of, but is none the less a very interesting comparison.
ReplyDeletePosted by Sara Weaver
This research is really fascinating, especially when thinking about it in terms of evolution. It was noted that these differences in personality may affect fitness. Do you know if one of the personalities was more frequent than the other? It would be interesting to perform another experiment that focused on mating interactions, allowing researchers to see if females are attracted to certain personalities!
ReplyDeletePosted by Katie Kalutkiewicz
Very interesting. i did not realize that personality was not a common study done with animals. I wonder if the personality traits are hereditary? Since the males care for the eggs they have fertilized i would imagine that his neighbors would be some of his offspring. if the personality traits are hereditary, the young fish would be competing directly with parent fish.
ReplyDeletePosted by Amber Kapchinske
The study did not note whether either personality trait was more prevalent than another. Even if one was, it's possible it would not reflect the true ratio of one personality to another because the sample size was so small (less than 50 fish).
ReplyDeleteAlso, since the researchers could not definitively say that these two categories of behavior could be called personalities, there was no mention of heredity in this study.
Posted by Dana Mirsky
Do you think sporadic fish would still exist over time if they had a high energy diet that didn't require them to conserve their energy? I Imagine that this sporadic behavior would decrease over time in the population of siamese fighting fish, what do you think?
ReplyDeleteAhmed Sandakli