4 May 2018 Abstracts

Correlation between Aggression and Persistence in Eastern Grey Squirrels

Caroline Armstrong '18

Personality has been seen in different species. These personality types sometimes are not solid and can change on the environment which is considered plasticity. These personality types include bold and shy, risk-taking, aggressive and non-aggressive and persistent and non-persistent behaviors. It has already been shown that personality can affect the fitness of the species such as if one is more bold in an environment with many predators, it is more likely to to killed than one that is shy in the same environment. Some studies have shown that there are correlations between two animal personality traits, but fewer have been done so with squirrels. This study was used to find a correlation between aggression and persistence in relation to food in eastern grey squirrels. To test this a mirror was used to test for aggression and a dog treat ball as used to test for persistence. The same squirrels were used to get the correlation between the two personality traits. It was showed that there was not a correlation between aggression and persistence but it was found that there is a correlation between risk-taking and persistence. Due to the different findings than predicted, this leads to further research that can be done with eastern grey squirrels.

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.