27 April 2018 Abstracts

Personality and Thermal Plasticity in Goldfish

James Nash '18

Animal behavior, especially in ectotherms, has been shown to be impacted by fluctuations in temperature on numerous accounts. Research has been done to show that various personalities are more or less plastic in relation to environmental change. However there few studies done on whether ectotherms with different personality types are impacted differently by a shift in temperature. We set out to determine whether goldfish with varying personalities would respond in a different manner to a predator stimulus when placed into an environment with a varied temperature. The data indicated that the goldfish responded strongly based upon the temperature of the environment, but that there was also an impact of the personality on their antipredator response. This showed us that bolder individuals are more plastic in their responses in changing environments, which would explain the trend towards more variability in the response time of the goldfish categorized as bold. We speculate that there are other factors in an individual's personality that would play a role in the ability to change behavior that could be investigated in future research.